Los Angeles partner Robert Milligan will be leading a presentation on “Hot Topics in Trade Secret Law” at the State Bar of California’s 35th Annual Intellectual Property Institute at the Silverado Resort in the Napa Valley on Saturday, October 30, 2010 beginning at 9:35 am.

The Institute is the premier multiday program of the State Bar of California’s Intellectual Property Law Section. The Institute begins on Thursday, October 28, 2010 with Nuts & Bolts sessions on intellectual property law. Friday and Saturday are two days of IP programming covering trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, patents, and cyber law.

The Institute is highlighted by 2010 Vanguard Awards on Friday afternoon. This year’s honorees are Brett Alten, Director of Patent Development, Apple, Inc., Ian C. Ballon, Hon. Jeremy D. Fogel, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and Cindy Cohn, Legal Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

From the thorny issues of California Uniform Trade Secret Act preemption of common law claims and remedies, through the continued use of employee non-solicitation/non-competition agreements in the post-Edwards era, to the by-now ubiquitous skirmishing over the sufficiency of a plaintiff’s pre-discovery designation of trade secrets under CCP § 2019.210, Robert and the expert panel will guide participants through recent developments in some of the more rapidly evolving areas of trade secret protection and litigation in California on Saturday morning.