From the category archives:

Trade Secrets

Not Every Great Idea Is a Trade Secret

March 7, 2009

You have a brainstorm: there is a market for dumpster rentals, and what better place to make the rentals than The Home Depot? You go to Home Depot and have it sign a non-disclosure agreement before you disclose this idea to it. You disclose the dumpster idea to Home Depot executives, but after much discussion

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How To Protect a Trade Secret (or, calling Ocean's Eleven)

February 11, 2009

Clients often ask what measures they need to take to protect their trade secrets, should it be necessary to enforce them in court and prove that they were treated as secrets. Here’s how Kentucky Fried Chicken does it, according to an AP story published today: The recipe lays out a mix of 11 herbs and

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Uniform Trade Secret Act Legislation – In Massachusetts, the Sixth Time May Be a Charm

November 6, 2008

Steve Chow at Burns & Levinson has sent me the legislation attached below, which the Massachusetts Uniform Law Commission, of which he is a member, filed with the Massachusetts House of Representatives on November 5, 2008. This is the sixth attempt since 1995 to get the 1985 Uniform Trade Secret Act (UTSA) enacted in Massachusetts;

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Zotero Lawsuit Illustrates Conflict Between Open Source and Contractual IP Rights

October 21, 2008

The following is background that may be necessary for some readers to understand the issues raised in the Thompson v. Zotero lawsuit, discussed below. The Mozilla Firefox web browser (the second-most popular web browser, after Microsoft Internet Explorer) allows anyone with the talent and interest to develop “add-ons”. An add-on is a computer functionality that

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Do Androids Dream …

November 6, 2007

As the lawyer drifts off to sleep the fantasy of the “perfect” IP case drifts across his mind. Not a patent case (way, way too complicated), not a copyright case (too boring if straightforward, and too difficult if not) ), not a trademark case (surveys, secondary meaning, no thanks), but a straightforward, meat and potatoes,

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Judge Gertner's Injunction in iRobot Case

November 5, 2007

iRobot’s trade secret case against Robotic FX has attracted a fair amount of attention in Boston, and has been reported in detail by Xconomy here. On Friday Judge Gertner issued her decision on iRobot’s motion for preliminary injunction, which has been posted by Xconomy here. I’ll update this posting once I’ve had a chance to

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Recent Cases (copyright, trade secrets)

October 12, 2006

In Cambridge Literary Properties, Inc. v. W. Goebel Porzellanfabrik Magistrate Judith Dein issued an extensive Report and Recommendation (adopted by Judge Nancy Gertner) on issues relating to the statute of limitations as a bar to a claim of copyright infringement. The case involves facts going back as far as 1931 which involved the drawings of

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What Did You Say Your Trade Secrets Were?

March 27, 2006

Trade Secrets, Procedure. Warning: if you’re seeking discovery in a trade secret case in the Suffolk Business Litigation Session make sure that you have (a) provided the court with a detailed description of your trade secrets, and (b) filed a protective order that strictly complies with the Uniform Rules of of Impoundment. For a recent

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