Software Escrow: An enterprise resiliency tool every legal department should have in their toolbox (with Don Dennis Jr.)
IP|Trend: Discovering Source Code
In Fiskars Finland OY AB v. Woodland Tools Inc., 2024 WL 2504717 (W.D. Wisc. May 24, 2024), plaintiff sued for alleged misappropriation of trade secrets. Defendants counterclaimed....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
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a writ of mandamus ordering the transfer of a case, finding that the district court’s denial of the motion to transfer “was so patently erroneous” that the extreme measure...more
In a previous article, Litigating Spoliation Claims in Trade Secret Cases, we discussed the rise of spoliation in trade secret and restrictive covenant cases. In that article, we provided background on trade secret laws and...more
In Compulife Software Inc. v. Newman, 959 F.3d 1288 (11th Cir. 2020), the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit examined the intersection between technology and improper use or acquisition of trade secrets....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
Here, we provide a cautionary tale of what can happen to a business that fails to preserve documents that are potentially relevant evidence to pending or threatened trade secrets litigation, and offer some takeaways for...more
On November 12, 2019, in BEC Capital, LLC et al. v. Bistrovic et al., 177 A.D.3d 438 (1st Dep’t 2019), the Appellate Division, the First Department issued a decision reversing an order of the Commercial Division and holding...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
On May 3, 2019, following a jury verdict rendered last November, a Santa Clara, California court entered a final judgment for $845 million in favor of semiconductor maker, ASML, in its suit against rival, XTAL, for stealing...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
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
In 2009, Sergey Aleynikov was a computer programmer employed by Goldman Sachs to write high-frequency trading code. He accepted an offer to join a new Chicago-based company, Teza Technologies. Before he left Goldman Sachs,...more
Sergey Aleynikov’s six-year trade secret odyssey through all possible configurations of litigation, civil and criminal, federal and state, may at long last have come to an end after the New York Supreme Court recently...more
Source code is increasingly becoming prevalent in litigation. Patent cases, copyright, trade secret, and even mass tort cases can turn on the content and function of source code. Attorneys Seth Northrop and David Prange...more
On October 16, 2013, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that Goldman Sachs must advance the legal fees of a former employee charged with stealing Goldman’s source code. The order is the latest twist in a case that...more