By Steve Korris  
Texas Supreme Court

Bexar County District Judge Karen Pozza stepped out of bounds when she ordered Union Pacific Railroad to share rate-setting secrets with personal injury lawyers, the Supreme Court of Texas ruled on Sept. 25.

Pozza and Fourth District appeals judges in San Antonio thought a confidentiality order would protect Union Pacific trade secrets, but the high court justices feared it might not.

"The trial court did enter an order restricting those who could view the rate structures, but that alone does not ensure that an order will not violate the trade secret privilege," they wrote in an unsigned opinion.

To continue reading this interesting article from Southeast Texas Record, click here.

BY SEAN O'SULLIVAN

WILMINGTON -- A former DuPont Co. researcher is facing federal charges of involvement in the attempted theft of trade secrets.

Hong Meng, 43, who already is facing civil charges, appeared before federal Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thynge Friday to answer a criminal complaint alleging improper accessing of a protected computer.

After the proceeding, Meng, a Chinese national who has permanent resident status in the United States, was given 14 days to establish a permanent address in Delaware or Pennsylvania to set up home confinement, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Kravetz.

To continue reading this interesting article from The News Journal, click here.

By: Wesley Loy

Alaska officials have hired two oilfield contractors to "winterize" Cook Inlet wells a California oil and gas producer recently abandoned as part of a liquidation plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Pacific Energy's abandoned assets need 'winterizing' to stave off problems, preserve value; cost could range up to $200,000.

The contractors will drain out water and oil and perform other work to safeguard wells and other facilities formerly operated by Pacific Energy Resources Ltd., he said. The goal is to prevent spills and preserve the value of the properties through the approaching winter freeze and ensuing spring thaw.

To continue reading this interesting article from Petroleum News, click here.

By: R. Robin McDonald

A Texas defense contractor found by an Atlanta federal jury last spring to have misappropriated trade secrets from Lockheed Martin Corp. has accused Lockheed of intentionally withholding evidence critical to its defense.

The evidence that forms that basis of L-3 Comm's allegations is not open to public scrutiny because the motion, including 37 exhibits, was filed under seal by L-3 Comm attorneys who claimed confidentiality under a broad protective order agreed to by the companies in a companion case in U.S. District Court in Dallas. L-3 Comm has sued Lockheed in that case.

To continue reading this article from Fulton County Daily Report, please click here.

By: David Lammers

TSMC vs. SMIC trade secrets trial going on now in an Oakland, Calif., courtroom featured several hours of testimony from SMIC corporate secretary Anne Chen, who testified that TSMC attorneys and executives failed to negotiate in good faith during a series of meetings in July and August 2006. TSMC is claiming that SMIC used TSMC's 130 nm technology, following a 2005 agreement in which SMIC paid $175M to TSMC.

TSMC's lawsuit includes a "trial technology list," referred to as a TTL throughout the trial. That list includes some 65 trade secrets selected by the TSMC legal team from among hundreds which TSMC claims SMIC has misappropriated.

To continue reading this article from Semiconductor International, click here.

GHS

The Obama administration has proposed changes to a shield bill in Congress that the bill's supporters believe would rob it of its original intent.

The shield bill, commonly known as the Free Flow of Information Act and now before the Senate Judiciary Committee, establishes steps prosecutors must take before issuing subpoenas to force journalists to identify unnamed sources. Journalists have long maintained - correctly, we believe - that there must be reasonable protection from such actions because confidential sources often will speak to reporters only if their identity remains secret. Prosecutors should not expect journalists to do their work for them, and sources should have the reassurance that their agreements with reporters can't be easily undone by law enforcement.

To continue reading this interesting article from Metro West Daily, click here.

By: Sean Callahan

New York--Reed Construction Data, a unit of Reed Elsevier, Thursday sued its chief competitor, McGraw-Hill Construction, alleging that Dodge, a unit of McGraw-Hill Construction that lists construction projects, has engaged in corporate spying since 2002.

"This is a case of brazen industrial espionage committed by a sophisticated corporate entity with the intent of forcing its top competitor out of the marketplace," the lawsuit stated.

The suit accuses Dodge of using consultants to pose as Reed Construction Data customers to gain more insight into RCD's business. The complaint alleges 11 counts of misconduct by Dodge, including misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, attempted monopolization and violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

To continue reading this interesting article from Media Business, click here.

By Joe Fay

Skype is claiming a victory in one of the many IP suits that are plaguing the P2P phone company at the moment.

Robert Miller, Skype's general counsel, said in a blog post the other day that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had ruled in favour of Skype and sort-of-ex-parent eBay, over a brace of patents asserted by Peer Communications Group.

The Court of Appeals ruling affirmed a judgment from the District Court of the Eastern District of Texas, that the two patents were invalid, said Miller. The patents related, unsurprisingly, to peer-to-peer communications networks.

To continue reading this interesting article from A Register, click here.

By: Ben Dunsmoor
KELOLAND

The public's right to know what is going on with its government is why South Dakota's new open records law passed the legislature this year.

Records that have been denied include the 911 tapes from the day Turner County Deputy Chad Mechels was shot near Marion, and the list of people who attend the Governor's annual Pheasant Hunt, which is considered proprietary information. 

"We do now have the presumption of openness, but on a case by case basis I think it's going to be hard after just one or two cases to see how everything is going to shake down," Swier said.

By Bonna Johnson
THE TENNESSEAN

Workplace restrictions on the digital world are forcing employees to give their fingers a rest, even though we've become a society that can't get enough of social networking sites and other online diversions.

Among U.S. companies, 54 percent completely prohibit workers from visiting social networking sites for any reason while at work, according to a report last week from Robert Half Technology.

More than ever, employers are cracking down on personal use of social networking via the Internet because they're worried about security breaches, loss of trade secrets and diminished productivity, according to recent national surveys.

By Howard Mintz
San Jose Mercury News

Lee, 44, and Ge, 36, are among just a handful of defendants to face federal charges under a section of the 13-year-old Economic Espionage Act, designed to prevent the illegal transfer of technology to foreign governments. While a number of defendants have pleaded guilty and been sentenced, only one other has gone to trial -- a former Boeing Co. and Rockwell International engineer convicted this summer in Santa Ana federal court for passing critical information on the space program to China.

For Silicon Valley, where companies have worried for years about their prized secrets being leaked to China and other countries, such a trial is a window into the complexities of protecting product information in a place with ties to every corner of the global economy.

By MATTHEW DOLAN

A former product engineer at Ford Motor Co. stole more than 4,000 pages of documents containing trade secrets and tried to use the confidential papers to help secure a new job with at least one Chinese car company, according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday.

Xiang Dong Yu, 47, of Beijing, was charged in a five-count indictment with theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets and unauthorized access to a protected computer, according to court papers. Mr. Yu, also known as Mike Yu, was arrested on Wednesday at Chicago O'Hare International Airport after disembarking from a flight from China. An attorney for Mr. Yu in Chicago didn't return a call for comment Thursday.

To continue reading this interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, please click here.

By Mary Brandel

When CIO Will Weider encouraged employees at Ministry Health Care and Affinity Health System in Wisconsin to use Facebook to spread the word about new programs and successful projects, he was surprised at the result: Few did so.

"Little pieces of information put together the big picture," Winkler says. Valuable tidbits include birth dates; the names of children, pets and best friends; facts about employers or comments about how projects at work are going; lists of hobbies; updates about vacations or life-changing events; and links to friends. The information is simple to find, either by using reconnaissance tools such as those available at sites like Maltego.com and Pipl.com or by simply doing searches on Facebook or LinkedIn.

"This stuff used to be under lock and key in a private diary," Gudaitis agrees. "The amount of disclosure on every level -- business dealings, trade secrets, classified information and personal information -- is enormously high." Also alarming, she says, are employees who tweet during meetings about what's happening and even who's in attendance.

To read the complete article as featured in San Francisco Chronicle, click here.

BY STEVEN J. DUBORD

Former NASA scientist Stewart Nozette has been charged with attempting to sell classified information about U.S. military satellites to Israel.

The FBI conducted a sting operation in which an agent posed as an operative with Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad. Nozette was arrested after he offered to trade secrets for cash and an Israeli passport. His high-level security clearance had enabled him to obtain classified information from NASA, the Pentagon, and the energy department laboratory where he worked on a radar system that detected ice on the moon.

The indictment indicates that Nozette was paid a large sum of money to serve as a consultant to a defense firm owned by the government of Israel.

To continue reading this interesting article by The New American, click here.

Reuters

Chicago-based Amsted Industries has won an initial determination at the International Trade Commission, where it had accused two U.S. and two Chinese companies of misappropriating trade secrets relating to manufacturing cast steel railway wheels.

In a document posted on the International Trade Commission's website, the panel said that one of its judges, Carl Charneski, had issued an initial determination that Amsted's secrets had been misappropriated.

The company had accused two U.S. companies -- Standard Car Truck Company Inc, owned by Wabtec (WAB.N), and Barber Tianrui Railway Supply LLC -- of misappropriating the secrets.

By Eric Lai

Ratcheting up the already hard-fought competition in the instant-on market, Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is suing next-door rival DeviceVM Inc. for trade secret theft and a former employee now at DeviceVM for breach of contract.

Milpitas, Calif.-based Phoenix claims that San Jose-based DeviceVM is using Phoenix's proprietary information in the latter's popular Splashtop software, which allows PCs to skip the Windows boot-up and run software within seconds via Splashtop.

Phoenix, which offers the competing HyperSpace platform, claims that trade secrets were passed to DeviceVM via an employee, Benedict Chong.

To continue reading this article from Computerworld, please click here

By JORDAN ROBERTSON

SAN FRANCISCO -- Two men accused of stealing computer chip blueprints -- and trying to tap the Chinese government to help launch a startup built on the contraband -- are becoming the first defendants charged with economic espionage to have their case heard by a jury.

The rare charge of economic espionage involves the theft of trade secrets with the intent to benefit a foreign government. That government doesn't have to be part of the plot for the charge to stick, though authorities say they sometimes suspect foreign officials know about a theft, even if that can't be proved in court.

The outcome of the case against Lan Lee, an American citizen, and Yuefei Ge, a Chinese national, could be a gauge of how seriously the public considers a crime that until now has been handled only by judges.

To continue reading this article from The Associated Press, click here.

By Joshua L. Cohen
The Legal Intelligencer

IP exclusionary rights provide a powerful commercial advantage. Patents confer the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the patented invention. Similarly, trademarks can be enforced to prevent others from using a source identifier with goods or services in a manner likely to confuse consumers.

With trade secrets, it is a right to prevent others from misappropriating valuable secret information. These are very different rights that serve different public policies. But they all have one thing in common -- they confer a right to prevent others from some act.

To continue reading this article from Law.com, click here.

The Starbucks Coffee Company announced that it is pleased that the company and Paul Twohig resolved a lawsuit that Starbucks filed against Twohig, who left the coffee company to join the Dunkin' Donuts team. As part of the settlement, Twohig will complete initial training but will otherwise not work at Dunkin' until January 15, 2010. In addition, Starbucks will be paid $500,000. Twohig also reconfirmed his commitments not to share Starbucks trade secrets and other confidential information with Dunkin' at any time..

To continue reading this article from QSR Magazine, click here.

By: Jaikumar Vijayan

A jury trial is set to begin in a somewhat rare trade-secret theft case in which federal prosecutors are trying to prove that two engineers misappropriated trade secrets from a U.S. technology company to benefit China's government.

The case is being prosecuted under a rarely used provision of the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) of 1996, which deals with the theft of trade secrets for the benefit of a foreign nation. The law was passed in response to a perceived need to protect U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property from foreign government-sponsored theft.

There have been only five cases so far in which individuals have been indicted under this provision in the EEA. Last June, Xiaodong Meng, 44, a software engineer born in China, became the first to be sentenced under the law.

To continue reading this interesting article from Computerworld (US), click here.

SHIFT Communications
Amanda Munroes

IneoQuest Technologies, Inc., global provider of advanced quality and service assurance solutions for digital video, has been cleared by a California state court jury of all claims, including alleged trade secret claims, brought by Ixia.

On October 15, 2009, a California jury soundly rejected all claims brought by Ixia against IneoQuest. Because IneoQuest prevailed at trial on all claims, IneoQuest will ask the Court to order Ixia to pay certain litigation costs incurred by IneoQuest.

The jury verdict in IneoQuest's favor was the second significant victory by IneoQuest in connection with this state court litigation. In 2006, IneoQuest prevailed over Ixia in connection with Ixia's motion for a preliminary injunction in which Ixia unsuccessfully attempted to stop IneoQuest from doing business with certain IneoQuest customers.

Click here to read the complete article by IneoQuest.

New York's recently released review of the environmental risks (PDF) posed by natural gas production in the Marcellus Shale offers the clearest picture yet of the chemicals used in the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing.

The document makes public the names of 260 chemicals, more than eight times as many as Pennsylvania state regulators have compiled. The list is the most complete released by any state or federal agency and could help answer concerns about hydraulic fracturing in Congress and in states where gas drilling has increased in recent years.

The industry has been reluctant to release information about the chemicals it uses, because it considers them a proprietary trade secret. While New York has made the names of the chemicals public, it seems likely that the data about their concentration will be shared only with state officials.

To continue reading this article from The Daily Green, click here.

Reported By Nancy Amons

Twenty-three conventions have now confirmed bookings at the Music City Center, even though construction has yet to begin on the multi-million dollar facility.

But it unclear how much these groups are paying to rent the new convention center because a lot of numbers are whited out on the contracts. That is not going over to well will Metro Council member Jim Gotto.

The Convention and Visitors Bureau said the details of what each group is paying for exhibit space and hotel rooms needs to be a trade secret for competitive reasons.

To read the complete article from WSMV, click here.