By Jonathan Soble in Tokyo

Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, has long been suspected of trading arms and arms-making technology with unsavoury allies, either for cash or for secrets such as the nuclear expertise he is believed to have obtained from Pakistan.

North Korea's apparent reaching out to the Burmese junta adds to its history of provocative behaviour. It test-fired a Taepodong long-range missile over Japan in April and, more recently, has launched short-distance missiles into the sea and sent a patrol boat into South Korean waters.

High-level military talks scheduled for next year between the US and China - historically a supporter of both North Korea and Burma - are expected to focus on strategies for containing Mr Kim's totalitarian regime.

To read the complete article published in Financial Times, click here.

"Virtually anyone with a computer and Internet access can wreak havoc. In the U.S., hacker attacks have been documented on county or state government sites".

Trend charts the related losses among business tied to data theft malware in the multiple billions worldwide, with trade secrets and other information that helps rivals gain a market advantage over each other at the middle of the activity.

"Cybercriminals are using malware for financial gain and for geopolitical purposes," said Ferguson. "We have even seen data-stealing malware attacks against U.S. defense contractors - believed to be Chinese - launched to steal confidential trade secrets.

To continue reading this article from E-Week Security Watch, click here.

By BRIAN NEWSOME
McCLATCHY-TRIBUNE

A Colorado Springs doctors' group that accepted at least $250,000 from dialysis giant DaVita is now the target of a lawsuit claiming the group is aiding a new rival, according to a Colorado Springs newspaper.

DaVita, which operates dialysis centers in Colorado Springs, claims Pikes Peak Nephrology in Colorado Springs violated a non-compete agreement, disclosed DaVita's trade secrets and solicited employees to go to Liberty, according to The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs.

Elsewhere, DaVita also sued one of its own former nurses after she went to work for a Liberty center in Pueblo, according to court documents.

To continue reading this article from The Pueblo Chieftain, click here.

By JOE HARRIS

A former managing partner of American Institutional Partners masterminded a scheme to steal the company's trade secrets from its owner, Pelican Equity claims in Federal Court.

Pelican Equity, which owns AIP's rights, says Robert Brazell partnered with Stephen Norris to form Talos Partners in order to steal AIP's confidential busines information for their own gain.

Brazell used the company's computers to copy a Web site that AIP was developing, which he used for Talos, the lawsuit states. Pelican claims the copying was so sloppy that early forms of Talos' site still referred to AIP.

To continue reading this interesting article from the Manhattan Courthouse News Service, click here.

By: TXsharon

Ninety-two percent of the 278 known chemicals used to produce natural gas have adverse health effects including endocrine disruption, neurological disorders and cancer. Chemical information is limited because the industry claims formulas are trade secrets.

If, like most Americans, you believe your water, air and soil are protected from these chemicals by federal environmental statutes, you are dead wrong. Loopholes in our federal environmental laws allow the oil and gas industry to endanger public health and safety and risk vital natural resources.

Fueled by technological advances, a frenzied expansion in natural gas drilling has exploded into 34 American states.

To read the complete article published in Daily Kos, click here.

Protecting Personal Information via Contract vs. Intellectual Property

Privacy Bar Camp DC
Aaron Titus

Intellectual property (IP) law is not an appropriate legal framework to protect personal information because nobody owns personal information. Personal information are facts, which are not copyrightable. Unless a person is famous, a name or SSN can't be trademarked. An address probably does not qualify for trade secret protection, and a date of birth is certainly not patentable. Even if some sort of property right accrued to personal information, it would most logically belong to the originators of the information. For example, parents would logically "own" a child's name and date of birth, since they created them. The government creates social security numbers, and the credit card companies create credit card numbers. The post office creates addresses, and the phone company creates phone numbers. Even third parties create gossip (beneficial or harmful), and it would be difficult to draw a line distinguishing a person's ownership interest in gossip or other third-party-created personal information.

In contrast to Creative Commons (which operates under IP licensing law), Privacy Commons is structured around principles of contract, where two parties can bind themselves to mutual obligations through offer and acceptance. Each model privacy policy would exist between a Data Steward (Steward), and a Data Subject (Subject). A PC Policy may be converted into a contract when the Steward and Subject formalize the policy through contract principles of offer, acceptance, and consideration.

By Mike Hughlett
Tribune reporter

Chicago-based Teza Technologies has suspended a new employee accused by federal prosecutors of stealing trade secrets from his former employer, Goldman Sachs Group.

Sergey Aleynikov was arrested Friday in New Jersey by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for allegedly stealing software code he had designed for Goldman Sachs.

The code involves "sophisticated mathematical formulas to place automated trades in the market," and such trades typically generate "many millions of dollars" annually, according to an FBI affidavit.

To continue reading this interesting article from The Chicago Tribune, click here.

By Pat Speer
Insurance Networking News

The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. filed a lawsuit this week that includes a lengthy, detailed complaint against its competitor New York-based Arch Insurance Group Inc., and its Bermuda-based parent Arch Capital Group Ltd., accusing Arch of stealing trade secrets in addition to many of its underwriters.

The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, also alleges individual complaints against former Hartford executives who helped Arch try to "destroy" the division they had departed--most notably David McElroy, a Connecticut resident who spent nine years at the Hartford, and was president of New York-based Hartford until June 5, according to a MarketWatch report.

To continue reading this interesting article, click here.

By: Henry K. Lee
Chronicle Staff Writer

David Russell Foley of Los Gatos and Michael Daddona were named in a 35-count indictment unsealed this week. The indictment, handed up July 1 by a grand jury in San Jose, includes charges of conspiracy, trafficking in counterfeit goods, theft of trade secrets, mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and bank fraud.

Foley was fired from the company, but for the next two years, he kept the proprietary code and trade secrets now belonging to Global VR and "secretly manufactured and sold game packs with counterfeit markings belonging to Global VR for his own financial benefit.

To continue reading this interesting article from San Francisco Chronicle, click here.

By: Brandon Bailey

High-tech crime is always evolving. Ask Matt Parrella, the federal government's top tech prosecutor in the Bay Area, who was chasing crooked telemarketers in Nevada in the 1990s when he first noticed the con artists peddling bogus investments were moving online.

While he's also prosecuted accused killers and alleged steroid-peddlers, these days Parrella is head of the U.S. attorney's computer hacking and intellectual property unit in San Francisco, handling cases involving stolen trade secrets, counterfeit software and organized identity theft.

To read the complete article from Mercury News, click here.

The former owner of Ultracade Technologies, a maker of MAME-style arcade cabinets, is looking at a 35-count federal indictment for fraud, theft of trade secrets, and trafficking counterfeit goods.

The charges therefore mean not only was Global VR defrauded, but also licensees Namco, Nintendo and Taito, whose games ran on the cabinets. A second man allegedly sold the packs via eBay, and also used a proprietary burner to replicate them.

Ultracade had a tortured organizational history going back to the 1990s but its cabinets were chic enough to be something of a luxury item among gaming cognoscenti .

To contine reading this interesting article from ZergWatch, click here.

By Greg Michaels

It turns out the little healthcare banking scuffle between UBS and Jefferies wasn't the first time these two titans have clashed over some form of theft. UBS confirmed yesterday that it charged three former members of its algorithmic trading group with stealing 25,000 lines of source code and taking the trade secrets to Jefferies.

UBS has twice pulled out of settlement talks and is hell bent on torturing my clients rather than finding out if the source code is being used.

To continue reading this interesting article from the Dealbreaker, click here.

By Steve Dickinson
China Law Blog

The Rio Tinto employees are accused of conducting industrial espionage. Specifically, they are accused of bribery and theft of trade secrets. These acts are crimes under Chinese law. Therefore, if the accusations are factual, the four Rio Tinto employees are subject to criminal sanction in China, with typical prison sentences of up to four years.

The only thing unusual about this case is the decision of the Chinese government to treat the matter not as a commercial trade secrecy violation, but rather, as a theft of state secrets.

By: Kathy Shwiff
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

A former engineer at Rockwell International and Boeing Co. (BA) was convicted Thursday of economic espionage - the first such conviction under a 1996 law - and acting as an agent of the People's Republic of China.

As a result of being found guilty on nine of 10 counts, the 73-year-old Chung faces more than 100 years in prison and several million dollars in fines.

"The cost of Mr. Chung's traitorous actions to American security and the economy cannot be quantified, but have now been exposed, and his ability to exploit critical technology has come to an end," said Salvador Hernandez, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles.

To read the complete news article, from WSJ, click here.

By: Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) -- China on Tuesday denied links to a Chinese-born engineer who was convicted in the U.S. last week of stealing trade secrets for China during his 30-year career at Boeing and Rockwell International. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement the charges against former Boeing Co. engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung were "fabricated."

A federal judge in California found Chung guilty of six counts of economic espionage and other charges for hoarding 300,000 pages of sensitive documents in his home, including information about the U.S. space shuttle and a booster rocket.

The government believes Chung began spying for the Chinese in the late 1970s, a few years after he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was hired by Rockwell International, which was later bought by Boeing.

To read the complete article from L.A. Times, click here.

By: Scott & Bush Ltd.

WEST BRIDGEWATER, Mass. - (Business Wire)
Atlantic Research Marketing Systems (A.R.M.S.®) Inc., with more than 40 National Stock Numbers [NSN's] in service to the U.S., and foreign militaries worldwide, specializes in advancing the capabilities of small arms, crew served, and anti-armor weapons in function, reliability and accuracy.

On June 26, 2009, after a two-week trial in the Massachusetts Federal District Court, a nine member federal jury returned a verdict against Stephen P. Troy and Troy Industries, finding them liable for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of fiduciary duty. Richard Swan, the president of A.R.M.S.® Inc., said, "We are pleased that the jury upheld our trade secret rights and determined that our former employee and his company should not profit from the theft of our trade secrets.

To read the complete news article from Earthtimes, click here.

By Chris O'Brien

The publication of internal documents about Twitter that were filched by a hacker caused fans across Silicon Valley to express their outrage.

For all the controversy, my own gut reaction after reading the notes and financial projections: "Is that it?" These were the great trade secrets that the valley fretted could undermine Twitter's future and send it plunging off a cliff? Hardly.

After covering Silicon Valley for more than a decade, I remain astounded by how companies of all sizes remain obsessed with secrecy. We live in an age of growing transparency. Yet companies are desperately pushing back against the information age they are enabling. Apparently, openness and sharing is good for everyone but them.

To continue reading this article from San Jose Mercury News, click here.

By Jennifer Learn-Andes
jandes@timesleader.com

Recent letter from lawyer for owner Greg Zappala critical of state auditors. A controversial 2004 Pittston Township detention center "trade secrets" lawsuit against former Luzerne County controller Steve Flood and two state welfare officials is still alive.

The suit had been inactive for years, but a lawyer for detention center owner Greg Zappala highlighted it in a recently released document about the welfare department's critical audit of PA Child Care's detention center in Western Pennsylvania.

To continue reading this article from Times Leader click here.

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

SAN DIEGO -- Few directors are as revered by the fervent fans who attend Comic-Con as Peter Jackson, and he showed up before a rapturous crowd of 6,500 Friday afternoon with a plea.

Mr. Jackson, the New Zealander who is lord of the "Rings" trilogy and all things fantasy and horror, was on hand to promote a science fiction thriller directed by a protégé, Neill Blomkamp.

John Lasseter, the king of American computer-generated animation, swapped trade secrets (through an interpreter) with Hayao Miyazaki, Japan's emperor of anime.

To continue reading this article from NYTimes, click here.

t's true to say that some artisans try to keep certain trade secrets. Lai Phu Ban, an artisan in Buoi Village in Tay Ho District, Ha Noi, is an example. He masters a unique technique for making sac phong paper, which is made from a special type of paper, called sac, and in the past this paper was used exclusively by kings and the royal court.

However, Ban wants to keep his technique secret. A Japanese once offered him thousands of dollars for an insight, but Ban refused.

To continue readng this interesting article from Viet Nam News,Vietnam num=02COM250709

Newshttp://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?"> click here.

By: Kenneth Corbin

It would seem that the push and pull between government officials trying to get sound data about broadband deployment and the providers who aren't too eager to divulge their trade secrets continues.

Dow Jones is reporting that leading industry associations, including US Telecom, NCTA and CTIA are appealing to the director of the National Telecommunications Information Administration to relax the level of detail the agency is requesting from the providers. Those are trade secrets, they claim, sensitive, competitive data.

To continue reading this interesting article from InternetNews, click here.

By: James Ramage

Conviction aside, recent high profile allegations of code copying at Goldman Sachs and UBS have the industry's attention. But electronic trading execs say that even though proprietary technology security is a priority, the risk of employees copying trade secret coding to use elsewhere isn't a major concern.

To begin with, they're confident of the security and surveillance they have in place. Secondly, they say they're algorithms are often woven tightly into a proprietary infrastructure. Therefore, algorithmic coding utility diminishes significantly once it's separated from that infrastructure. This is the situation at Credit Suisse, said James Doherty, director and head of product development for Advanced Execution Services.

To continue reading this article from Traders Magazine Online News, click here.