Seyfarth partners Erik Weibust, Jeremy Cohen, Scott Humphrey, and Marcus Mintz recently published an article entitled “Protecting Trade Secrets Without Breaking the Bank (or Even Negatively Affecting Profits)” in the Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal. The article addresses the use of litigation funding in trade secret cases.
The Intellectual Property & Technology Law
Seyfarth Partners Jeremy Cohen, Marcus Mintz, and Erik Weibust have published an article entitled “Navigating and Weathering the COVID-19 Storm with Your Trade Secrets Intact” in Corporate Compliance Insights. The article addresses several of the topics they have been blogging about over the past two months, including what constitutes “reasonable measures” to
On May 27, 2020, at 1:00 p.m. EDT, Seyfarth partner Erik Weibust will be presenting on a webinar for the ABA’s IPLSPRING CLE Series, which is being held in lieu of the ABA-IPL Annual Meeting this year due to COVID-19. The topic is “Trade Secret Law: What You Need to Know Now.” Erik will be
Social distancing, a term which few of us had heard of before this year (despite the fact that it has been used since at least the early 2000s), is stretching into its third month. Notwithstanding some loosening of shelter-in-place advisories, and the fact that some employers are starting to open up offices and invite their workforce back in, a majority of employees are still working from home. This has broad implications for protection of employers’ trade secrets and confidential information—in many cases, a company’s most precious asset.
Continue Reading Security From Afar: How Best to Protect Trade Secrets in a World of Remote Working, Zoombombing, and Uncertainty
The Sedona Conference’s working group on trade secrets has created a draft Commentary on the Proper Identification of Asserted Trade Secrets in Misappropriation Cases.
The draft Commentary explains:
The burden is on the party asserting trade secret misappropriation to answer this question by “identifying” the alleged trade secrets. While this requirement for “identification” is
As the global economy falters, a fortunate few companies have seen tremendous growth as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Among the companies benefitting from the shelter-in-place orders currently in effect is Peloton Interactive, Inc. (“Peloton”), which manufactures and distributes home exercise equipment capable of streaming live and pre-recorded classes. Since Peloton’s IPO in late 2019, its shares have jumped over 50%, largely based on its outstanding second quarter results. As people have been shut-out of their gyms, they are frequently turning to alternatives, including Peloton, to stay active (and sane). In full disclosure, that includes the authors of this article and many of our colleagues.
Continue Reading Avoid Spinning Your Wheels: Peloton as a Case Study in the Protection of Customer Goodwill
In a case following a familiar trade-secret set of facts, on April 28, 2020, the Texas First District Court of Appeals in Houston reversed the trial court’s grant of a motion to dismiss under the Texas Citizens Participation Act (“TCPA”) in National Signs, Inc. v. John Graff. In doing so, the First District joined the growing number of Texas Appellate Courts that have held that the TCPA, in its Pre-September 2019 amended state, does not protect private communications that are centered on competition or preparing to compete against the plaintiff.
Continue Reading Houston First Circuit Court of Appeals Joins the Growing Trend by Holding that the Pre-Amendment TCPA Does Not Protect Certain Competitive Behavior
With so many employees now working remotely through the COVID-19 pandemic—using new and sometimes untested technologies—we are taking this opportunity to collect real-time perspectives on what companies are doing to protect their trade secrets in the current climate.
To that end, we have created a brief anonymous survey that should take no more than three
Legal analytics powerhouse Lex Machina recently released its 2020 Trade Secret Litigation Report, which highlights federal litigation trends in the last decade, as well as the last year specifically. While it’s very much an open question whether these trends will continue in light of the COVID-19 pandemic (more on that in our next post), the report identifies some interesting data. In addition to some of the highlights contained in the official report, a deep dive of Lex Machina’s case repository reveals even more granular trends, demonstrating the wealth of information that can be gleaned and theories that can be tested from the data compiled from the more than 1.7 million federal cases in Lex Machina’s database. In fact, we have to admit that many of our own assumptions were turned upside down upon digging into the voluminous data available on the Lex Machina website! Expect to see a guest post from Lex Machina soon explaining how this data is sourced and what subscribers can do with it.
Some of the key findings in the report and/or associated data:
Continue Reading A Decade of Data Whets the Appetite for Data Nerds: Lex Machina Releases 2020 Report on Trade Secret Litigation
Seyfarth attorney Scott Humphrey will be a presenter and panelist at the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (“AIPLA”) Virtual Spring Meeting on May 4, 2020. Scott will take the stage with in-house counsel and a litigation finance company to discuss “Everything You Wanted to Know about Litigation Funding But Were Afraid to Ask: Exploring the