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,
The Southern District of California recently confirmed that the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“CUTSA”) does not preempt other civil claims to extent they are based on wrongful conduct relating to non-trade secret intellectual property.
The case involves an employee leaving a company and allegedly commercializing its trade secret with a competitor. Defendant Mr. Corey was an original co-founder of Plaintiff Javo – which sold coffee, tea, and botanical extracts. He played a key role in developing Javo’s proprietary process for making extracts. The process involved using a specially made extraction vessel and particular levels of water quality, temperature and pressure. In 2011, as a result of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, Javo terminated Mr. Corey’s employment. Importantly to this case, his employment agreement had included an assignment of all his rights and interests in any trade secrets to Javo.
Mr. Corey went on to work for the Defendant, California Extraction Ventures (“CEV”). Shortly thereafter, Mr. Corey filed patent applications disclosing some of Javo’s allegedly proprietary information, including purported trade secret information, as well as other confidential (but not trade secret) information. Rather than assign the patent applications to Javo, Mr. Corey assigned them to CEV, his new employer. Eventually seven patents issued, and seven additional applications were published.
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Crowell & Moring invites you to attend the first installment of our new Trade Secrets Webinar Series: Protecting Trade Secrets and other Intellectual Property with Blockchain, taking place on Tuesday, January 14th at 2:00 pm (EDT).
Blockchain technology is a powerful tool, outside of just the realm of cryptocurrency, that can be utilized to safely encrypt and thereby protect trade secrets. During this webinar, Crowell & Moring attorneys Mark Klapow, Josh Rychlinski, and Kayvan Ghaffari will discuss ways in which your company can implement blockchain technology into its IT systems, and can be used practically and legally to protect trade secrets and other IP rights, giving you back your peace of mind.
We will provide a CLE certificate of attendance and other materials to use in seeking continuing education credits.
To register, please click here.
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Two South Korean competitors are locked in a heated battle over alleged theft of trade secrets relating to electric vehicle (“EV”) lithium-ion battery technology which is an industry expected by experts to generate over $23 billion in revenues by 2027.
The story starts back in April when LG Chem brought a lawsuit against SK Innovation
On September 23rd, 2019, the District Court for the District of Colorado awarded Atlas Biologicals, Inc. a total of $2 million against Defendant Thomas Kutrubes and his company, Peak Serum, Inc. Kutrubes, a part owner and former employee of Atlas, was found liable for trademark infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of fiduciary duty.
Christopher M. Warman allegedly has some valuable fudge recipes. In his second action to protect what he claims to be a valuable trade secret recipe for fudge, Warman’s complaint does not sugar-coat the parties’ sticky situation. He and his company have sued his ex-wife, Christine Falvo, and her company for a myriad of claims—trade secret
In our next post on the EU Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943, we turn to the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the EU Trade Secrets Directive was implemented in 2018 by the Act on the Protection of Trade Secrets (Wet bescherming bedrijfsgeheimen) and led to amendments to Dutch procedural law including those related to confidentiality clubs. For example, access to alleged trade secrets introduced in proceedings is granted to at least one person of the opposing party and that party’s lawyer under confidentiality restrictions. (Article 1019ib, Dutch Code of Civil Procedure). Depending on the nature of the trade secret, however, the court may order that access to certain documents be limited to only a lawyer or another authorized representative but not a representative of the opposing party. (Article 22a(3), Dutch Code of Civil Procedure).
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The EU Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943 contains a variety of confidentiality protections expressly protecting the publicity of the proceedings because “[t]he prospect of losing the confidentiality of a trade secret in the course of legal proceedings often deters legitimate trade secret holders from instituting legal proceedings to defend their trade secrets, thus jeopardising the effectiveness of the measures, procedures and remedies provided for. For this reason, it is necessary to establish, subject to appropriate safeguards ensuring the right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, specific requirements aimed at protecting the confidentiality of the litigated trade secret in the course of legal proceedings instituted for its defence.” Article 9 of the Directive specifically required EU member states to implement rules creating such protections, such as by restricting access to hearings and creating so-called “confidentiality rings” or “confidentiality clubs” limiting the dissemination of confidential information and documents to designated persons.
The United Kingdom’s implementing law, the Trade Secrets (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2018, requires that the court have the power to restrict access to documents containing alleged trade secrets and to hearings. s. 10(5). There is already significant maturity in the kinds of confidentiality protections available in English litigation so this is unlikely to lead to significant change. Although the principle of open justice is a fundamental feature of the legal system and departures are permitted only if necessary in the interests of justice, exceptions and restrictions to openness and respect for confidentiality are actually already well-established in the United Kingdom. See McKillen v Misland (Cyprus) Investments Ltd and others [2012] EWHC 1158 (Ch).
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A recent International Trade Commission (ITC) case shows that, although rarely used, the ITC remains a viable option for parties pursuing trade secret misappropriation claims. Trade secret claims can be brought under Section 337(a)(1)(A)’s catch-all for other “unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles”—often called “non-statutory” claims—and can result in