Software Escrow: An enterprise resiliency tool every legal department should have in their toolbox (with Don Dennis Jr.)
IP|Trend: Discovering Source Code
The battle between open source software developers and the leading AI code generators will rage on. Despite the Court dismissing Plaintiffs’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1202(b) claims with prejudice, it...more
Understanding how hardware and firmware/software work together to perform desired functions or tasks is an important enabler to unlocking the value of intellectual properties in the systems (including embedded systems) area....more
According to Statista*, in 2020 computer technology patents made up the majority of patent applications in the U.S., totalling approximately 60,000 patents. In 2022, Unified Patents** found that software, hardware, and...more
Generally, an employer owns all rights in software code created by its employee in the scope of their employment. As outlined in the last edition of this series, this general rule typically applies to independent contractors...more
Proprietary source code can be one of the most valuable assets a company has, and with the introduction of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), the creation and evolution of source code has increased at an exponential...more
Companies (including through the use of AI) are increasingly reliant on open source software to expedite their software development. A recent case filed in California, SFC v. Vizio, calls upon the state court to interpret two...more
AI-based code generators are a powerful application of generative AI. These tools leverage AI to assist code developers by using AI models to auto-complete or suggest code based on developer inputs or tests. These tools raise...more
Roblox recently announced that it is working on generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that will help developers who build experiences on Roblox, to more easily create games and assets. The first two test tools create...more
While not new, the use of “open data” is on the rise as teams everywhere look for existing low-cost datasets to facilitate their projects without the need to personally incur the time, expense and internal approval process of...more
As a previous Wilson Sonsini Alert reported, Snail Games USA Inc. and Wildcard Properties LLC (collectively, “Snail”) sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice to Valve Corporation (Valve) in order to...more
Non-profit organizations often use third-party images, photos, videos, or software in their everyday operations. It is often beneficial to leverage such materials that are licensed under “open licenses” because they are free...more
Due to the size and complexity of computer code, the software is usually created by a team of programmers. Consequently, to fully own software one must first make sure that each of the developers has relinquished any...more
In today’s digital age, the question isn’t whether there is open source software being used in a company’s products, but how it is being used and what license governs its use. Open source is ubiquitous. Despite its...more
Copyright protection is, generally speaking, formality-free in the US and other member states of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. A software rights owner does not have to publish, affix...more
To determine which computer program elements are copyrightable, the federal courts (which have exclusive jurisdiction over US copyright cases) commonly identify and analyze each of the program’s literal and non-literal...more
Jerich Beason is joined by Don Dennis, who is an attorney focusing on copyright and trademark infringement, Internet law, defamation, trade secret misappropriation, data security breach, and privacy law. Jerich and Don...more
As patent practitioners know, the law sometimes defines technical topics in ways that do not always accord with how engineers and scientists understand those same topics. With that, since this series addresses legal...more
Learn how copyright can protect your software “Beyond Source Code” to cover both screen displays and UX, how the scope of software copyright law might impacted by the pending Supreme Court opinion in Oracle v. Google, and the...more
Trade secrets can be stolen at any point, and such theft can be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. This is evident in recently unsealed charges brought against a software engineer who stole source code from his United...more
Court rules that WeRide is likely to prevail on merits of its trade secret misappropriation claims against competitors - In a trade secret misappropriation case between two autonomous vehicle companies, the Northern...more
Theft of trade secrets typically spurs civil actions against the offender, but theft of trade secrets can also be prosecuted criminally under the Economic Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1831 et seq. (the “Act”) and other related...more
The Situation: Artificial intelligence ("AI") technology is exploding across virtually all industries. Technology companies are innovating at warp speed, and even companies that do not principally identify as "technology...more
As President Trump visits China, U.S. is investigating a longstanding issue in bilateral relationship—technology transfer/intellectual property requirements—that has potential implications for trade. U.S. business and...more
A recent federal district court decision denied a motion to dismiss a complaint brought by Artifex Software Inc. (“Artifex”) for breach of contract and copyright infringement claims against Defendant Hancom, Inc. based on...more
On April 20, 2017, the New York Court of Appeals issued a brief order continuing former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov’s eight-year voyage through the state’s and country’s legal systems. Here’s the issue: does...more