As the year comes to a close, it’s safe to say 2020 was a year unlike any other and full of lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to the growing threat to U.S. intellectual property abroad.

A look back on the 10 most read posts from this past year highlights some key developments

Crowell & Moring invites you to attend the fifth installment of our Trade Secrets Webinar Series – The Revolving Door of Autonomous Vehicle Talent: Managing Employee Access to Trade Secrets & Facilitating Robust Investigation of Safety Issues, taking place on Tuesday, May 12th at 02:00 pm (EDT).

Autonomous Vehicle (“AV”) developers have been aggressively working to safeguard their vital design documents and data, and have increasingly relied on lawsuits to protect their proprietary information and to prevent such information from reaching their competitors as human talent continues to revolve through the AV industry. Given the increasing popularity of self-driving technology, AV developers should remain vigilant in protecting the trade secrets governing their autonomous vehicle programs and should be sure to implement sound policies for retrieving data upon employee departure.

Join Crowell & Moring attorneys Cheryl Falvey, Rukiya Mohamed, and Paul Mathis for a live discussion on trade secret and liability issues unique to AV developers as well as best practices.

To register, please click here.
Continue Reading Please Join Us for the Fifth Installment of our 2020 Webinar Series: The Revolving Door of Autonomous Vehicle Talent

In addition to reshaping how business is being done, COVID-19 has presented companies with unprecedented challenges and an increasingly remote work force and has made it more important than ever for businesses to evaluate the security and protection of their trade secrets and confidential information.

Crowell & Moring attorneys Jim Stronski, Anne Li,

As autonomous vehicles quickly move farther towards the mainstream, the underlying technology has become increasingly more valuable and has led to an uptick in the theft of autonomous vehicle (“AV”) trade secrets. Indeed, criminal prosecutions of former employees for trade secret theft have been on the rise, especially in the autonomous vehicle segment. Two recent cases underscore the enforcement agencies’ efforts to stem the rise in trade secret theft in the AV segment. Anthony Scott Levandowski was a former executive at both Uber and Google. He departed Google and created a new company named Ottomotto, LLC that was later purchased by Uber. Levandowski pled guilty to theft of trade secrets from Google, admitting that he downloaded approximately 14,000 files from an internal, password-protected Google server to his personal laptop, including a key internal tracking document from Google that detailed the status of its self-driving car program. Levandowki faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and $250,000 fine plus restitution.
Continue Reading Prosecutions of Trade Secret Theft by Former Employees in Autonomous Vehicle Development

Crowell & Moring invites you to attend the third installment of our Trade Secrets Webinar Series: Top 10 Tips for Safeguarding Trade Secrets, taking place on Tuesday, March 10th at 02:00 pm (EDT).

Instituting and maintaining a trade secret protection policy is a challenge. If no policy is yet in place, it may be difficult to decide where to begin. For an existing policy, ensuring its efficacy and adequacy under the law is time-consuming. Regardless of your situation, the solution is to take purposeful and informed action to improve the protection of your highest priority trade secrets.

Join Crowell & Moring attorneys Jim Stronski, Anne Li, and Robert Kornweiss to hear their top 10 tips for safeguarding your company’s trade secrets – a list of concrete actions you can assess, adapt, and implement based on your company’s priorities.

To register, please click here.
Continue Reading Please Join Us for the Third Installment of our 2020 Webinar Series: Top 10 Tips for Safeguarding Trade Secrets

Crowell & Moring has released its Regulatory Forecast 2020: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year, a report that explores the impact of regulatory changes on the technology industry and other sectors, and provides insight into the trends that in-house counsel can expect to face in the coming year.

For 2020,

Crowell & Moring invites you to attend the second installment of our Trade Secrets Webinar Series: Trade Secrets are Not Intellectual Property – At Least Not in the European Union, taking place on Tuesday, February 11th at 11:00 am (EDT).

How are trade secrets defined in the EU versus in the US?

How do the US and EU judicial bodies differ in their view of trade secrets, and how does that protect, or leave vulnerable, your company’s most valuable information?

How might cross-border (or transnational) companies protect their intellectual property assets and prepare for threats when subject to dual (EU & US) enforcement?

During this webinar, Crowell & Moring attorneys Jan-Diederik Lindemans and Judith Bussé will guide you through the small differences in the language and theory behind the EU Trade Secrets Directive and the US Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), and the important consequences these have on your trade secrets protection and strategy.

To register, please click here.
Continue Reading Please Join Us for the Second Installment of our 2020 Webinar Series: Trade Secrets are Not Intellectual Property – At Least Not in the European Union

Crowell & Moring has released Litigation Forecast 2020: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year. The eighth-annual Forecast provides forward-looking insights from leading Crowell & Moring lawyers to help legal departments anticipate and respond to challenges that might arise in the year ahead.

For 2020, the Forecast focuses on how the

On January 14th, 2020, Crowell & Moring hosted a webinar session discussing blockchain and its implications for trade secret protection, as well as its potential implications on other areas of intellectual property (IP).

Introduced by Crowell & Moring partner Mark Klapow, attorneys Josh Rychlinski and Kayvan Ghaffari explained general principles of trade secret law,