Photo of Anne Elise Herold Li

Coronavirus-related emergency measures may limit litigants’ ability to protect trade secrets in state court. State courts are drastically altering their operations in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, including closing courthouses, continuing trials and other deadlines, suspending rules requiring paper filings, and encouraging, if not requiring, telephone and videoconferencing.

New York State, which as of the publishing of this piece was the state with the highest number of confirmed cases in the United States, has imposed some especially restrictive measures for litigants in state court. New York’s Chief Administrative Law Judge, has restricted all non-essential filings (and has also postponed all “nonessential” services). New York courts are only accepting filings pertaining to emergency matters, which the Administrative Order defines to include criminal matters; family court; certain Supreme Court matters including guardianship matters, emergency election law applications, and extreme risk protection orders; and civil housing matters, including landlord lockouts, serious code violations, serious repair orders, and applications for post-eviction relief. The Order is available here. Filings in most civil suits are, accordingly, restricted.
Continue Reading Coronavirus Related Restrictions on Emergency Trade Secrets Filings in New York

In trade secret misappropriation cases, the scope and sufficiency of the trade secret identification are central issues. And, once resolved, plaintiffs may allege new trade secrets thefts gleaned during fact discovery, which rekindles those issues. Recently, the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois closely scrutinized just such lately raised trade secrets in Motorola

New York has recently enacted disclosure laws that could impact clean product manufacturers’ ability to protect their trade secret chemical formulations. While California was the first U.S. state to pass a law requiring disclosure of all substances contained in cleaning products, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) Household Cleansing Product Information Disclosure Program imposes

In July 2018, U.S. District Judge James Patterson imposed a $59 million penalty against China’s largest wind-turbine firm, Sinovel Wind Group LLC (“Sinovel”), for stealing trade secrets from a Massachusetts-based technology company, American Superconductor Inc. (“AMSC”). This fine was imposed as restitution to the American company, AMSC, after Sinovel was found guilty of stealing

On January 11, 2018, the Federal Circuit issued a game-changing decision that addressed the pitfalls of an entity’s attempt to secure the ownership of intellectual property rights through an employment agreement. The Court held that three different provisions that the employer argued effected an assignment of intellectual property rights were not sufficient to convey those

Counsel Anne Elise Herold Li will be speaking at the 2017 BIO International Convention on a panel titled, “Keeping it Under Wraps: Protecting, Asserting and Creating Value from Your Trade Secret” that will begin at 1:45 pm on June 21.

The 2017 BIO International Convention will take place June 19 – 22 at the San

The America Invents Act, the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and recent Court decisions demonstrate the ongoing changes affecting intellectual property. The new Trump administration is expected to continue this trend from the legislative perspective, and is expected that Congress will consider further legislation that may rival the size of the America Invents Act. At the

Fig cookiesThe Criminal Court of Mechelen (Belgium) ruled in favor of Bofin Biscuits against a former production assistant accused of having stolen the assistant director of the cookie baker’s laptop. The laptop allegedly contained the secret recipes of all the cookies produced by Bofin Biscuits. This case is interesting because of the nature of the secrets and also when compared to that of the “fig spread”-case discussed here two weeks ago. It also confirms that trade secret misappropriation cases do not necessary only involve complex matters on state of the art technology owned by large multinationals.

The facts of the case are rather straight-forward. On November 12, 2013 the assistant-director of Bofin Biscuits noticed that his laptop had gone missing during his absence from November 6 to November 11. Images from the surveillance video system of Bofin Biscuits showed that the actual taking of the laptop had not been filmed. The camera hanging outside the assistant-director’s office did show a production assistant walking down the hallway where the office was located, entering it and leaving with something clearly hidden under his coat. During the trial the production-assistant did not contradict that he was the person that had been filmed, but he denied that he had taken the laptop. When asked what he then was hiding under his coat, he claimed not to recall anything.

For the public prosecutor this was a clear cut case and he requested the court to sentence the former production assistant to a six month effective prison sentence and a 4.800 EUR fine. Bofin Biscuits, who had joined the proceedings by suing its now ex-employee for civil injury, requested 1.500 EUR for the still missing laptop, 2.500 EUR for the time spent on recovering the information stored on the laptop, 500 EUR moral damages and a provisional damages amount of 25.000 EUR for having stolen the secret cookie recipes.Continue Reading Employee Who Stole the Cookie Recipe From the Cookie Jar Fined €1 (Yes, that’s one single Euro)

Yesterday, an intermediate New York State appellate court, the First Department of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, reinstated the conviction of an Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer, Sergey Aleynikov. At issue here are allegations that Mr. Aleynikov violated the New York penal code by copying source code for a proprietary high frequency trading system at Goldman Sachs before he left to join a competitor.  This case is noteworthy for the twists and turns it has taken through the federal and state criminal justice systems and how it evidences the trade secret protection challenges faced by employers on Wall Street and in other industries.
Continue Reading Not So Fast: Ex-Goldman Sachs Employee’s Conviction For Stealing Source Code Reinstated