By Ina Fried
Beyond Binary - CNET News

Could a legal challenge threaten the launch of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader?
In a new lawsuit, start-up Spring Design is seeking not only monetary damages from Barnes & Noble, but also is looking to get an injunction barring sales of the Nook, which it says misappropriates its trade secrets.

According to the lawsuit, a copy of which was seen by CNET News, Spring Design says it is seeking "preliminary and permanent injunctive relief... restraining and enjoining B&N from use or disclosure of Spring's confidential information or trade secrets, including the sale of the Nook."

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By David Lammers - News Editor

TSMC has won a nearly complete victory in the trade secrets trial ongoing in Oakland, Calif. After deliberating for several days, the 12-member jury delivered a verdict Tuesday morning, finding in TSMC's favor on the major issues. The damages phase of the trial begins Thursday and is expected to go to the jury early next week.

Jeffrey Chanin, lead attorney for the law firm representing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., said that the jury found that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (Shanghai) breached the settlement "in all the ways that TSMC has alleged, and that TSMC did attempt in good faith to resolve SMIC's breaches before filing this lawsuit," claiming breach and for misappropriation. "SMIC's cross-claims for breach of the settlement and bad faith were rejected. The jury was polled and was unanimous in its decision," he said.

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

By Rhett Pardon
XBIZ.com

Operators of RedTube.com filed a lawsuit against WEG, claiming the company scooped up a number of RedTube domain names with the intention to divert and acquire its traffic and profits.

The suit against WEG, formally known as Web Entertainment Group Inc., said that the Boca Raton, Fla., company purchased RedTube.org, RedTube.pl, RedTube.fr, RedTube.com.br, RedTube.br and RedTube.ca between 2007 and this year in an attempt to ride on RedTube.com's coattails of "success, fame and goodwill" by using "confusingly similar names and domains."

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Two individuals, Charles Joyce and James Voigt, sued PepsiCo and two Pepsi distributors in a Wisconsin state court, claiming that nearly 20 years earlier, they had spoken confidentially with the distributors about the idea of bottling purified water; and that PepsiCo misappropriated Joyce and Voigt's trade secrets in order to bottle and sell Aquafina water.

The distributors answered Joyce and Voigt's complaint, but Pepsi did not. As a result, the court has entered a default judgment against Pepsi in the mindbogglingly large sum of $1.26 billion.

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The Associated Press

ATLANTA -- A former Home Depot Inc. manager is facing federal charges that he shared the Atlanta-based retail giant's trade secrets with a potential vendor.

Prosecutors say in court filings that Martinez was a senior manager in the company's product engineering department responsible for assisting vendors who sought to sell products to the company.

Court documents show a $5,000 bond was set for Martinez. Martinez's attorney did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

Source: Global Times

Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), a Shanghai-based contract chipmaker, announced Tuesday that Richard Chang resigned as the chief executive after the settlement of a long-running patent litigation.

Chang will be replaced by David Wang, former executive vice-president of Applied Materials, a semiconductor equipment company based in the US, and former chief executive of Huahong, a smaller company that works with SMIC.

According to SMIC's announcement yesterday, the company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, agreed to a compromise with TSMC agreeing to settle a long-running trade secrets battle started two years ago with a $200 million payment from SMIC and a 7.4 percent stake in the company.

By Walter C. Jones
Morris News Service

The official price tag for Georgia Power's share of two new reactors at Plant Vogtle is $1.5 billion lower than when the company requested permission to build them, according to testimony Tuesday in front of the Georgia Public Service Commission.

The testimony by executive Jeffrey Burleson came during the commission's first semi-annual hearing to oversee the cost of the construction.
"The actual schedule itself is a Georgia Power Co. trade secret," Mr. Burleson told the five commissioners.

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By Drew C. Wilson
Havelock News

A self-described computer geek, Richard Rogers believes he has cracked a code that has eluded scholars and researchers for more than 500 years.

Mystery has always surrounded the Voynich Manuscript, located at Yale University.

The 240 vellum pages of the hand-written book are so fragile that curators refuse to allow it to be touched. The 6- by 9-inch book contains pictures of plants, nymphs, astrological diagrams and hundreds of lines of undecipherable text matching no known language.

Rogers said he believes the book is so secretive because the family used it to protect trade secrets.

By: Susan Shea

Enterprise Threat Assessments Reduce Intellectual Property Theft, Identity Theft and Organizational Risk

First detailed in the book, "THREAT! Managing Risk in a Hostile World," by ZeroPoint Risk Research president MacDonnell Ulsch, the Enterprise Threat Index for Predictive Risk Impact Scenario Modeling™ (ETX PRISM™) was developed as a holistic risk management framework designed to reduce intellectual property theft, identity theft and organizational risk. ETX PRISM™ enables an accurate assessment of information security deficiencies resulting from both human causes and natural phenomena.

About ZeroPoint Risk Research, LLC. Headquartered in Boston, MA, ZeroPoint Risk Research, LLC, advises clients on security, privacy, threat, and risk impact considerations, including identity theft, intellectual property and trade secret theft and organizational risk.

To continue reading this interesting article from Zero Point Risk, click here.

By Elinor Mills

Microsoft sued a former employee earlier this year for allegedly stealing trade secrets that were later used in a patent lawsuit against Microsoft partners, in which Microsoft later intervened as a party-defendant.

Microsoft's lawsuit alleged that Mullor took a job at Microsoft in 2005 while he was still chief executive at Ancora. While working on the Windows team, Mullor allegedly downloaded confidential documents, according to the suit. Shortly thereafter, Ancora sued Dell, HP, and Toshiba claiming that their use of Microsoft technology violated a patent held by Ancora.

Microsoft and a former employee have settled litigation involving allegations of patent infringement and trade secret theft.

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By ROBERT C. POZEN

GARY LOCKE, the secretary of commerce, has urged Congress to overhaul the nation's patent law by the end of the year. Although a bill has been circulating since 2005, a fierce fight involving the high-tech and drug industries on a technical issue -- how to measure damages when a company violates a patent applying to one component of a larger product -- has kept it from reaching a vote.

The quality of American patents has been deteriorating for years; they are increasingly issued for products and processes that are not truly innovative -- things like the queuing system for Netflix, which was patented in 2003.

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BY KIM BOLAN
VANCOUVER SUN

An RCMP officer installing a secret tracking device in a Bacon brothers' vehicle said he was not looking for guns when he stumbled on a hidden compartment containing four loaded firearms and spare magazines.

Cpl. Raymond Pang, a specialist who installs clandestine listening and tracking devices, testified in Surrey Provincial Court Monday that no other officers had suggested to him the Bacons' Suburban might contain a secret compartment.

Pang, who is with the RCMP's "special I" unit, would not disclose how the installations are done. "Due to the trade secrets involved in our installations, we safeguard our techniques," Pang told Judge Jean Lytwyn.

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By Steve Green
Las Vegas Sun

A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit over trade secrets at high-end photo galleries operating in Las Vegas.

Peter Lik USA charged in the lawsuit that Scottland, a former Peter Lik employee, had violated his noncompete agreement by soliciting the business of Peter Lik customers on behalf of The Lough Road.

Court records show the suit was settled and dismissed last month, with Scottland's noncompete agreement modified to allow him to continue working for The Lough Road and further amended to specify which customers Scottland could solicit.

By Vicki Vaughan
Express-News

TXCO Resources Inc., the oil and gas exploration company that filed for bankruptcy protection May 17, filed a complaint this week against Dallas-based Peregrine Petroleum LLC, claiming the company stole TXCO's trade secrets and engaged in unfair competition by using confidential information.

The allegations relate to TXCO's acquisition and leasing of oil and gas properties, particularly in two areas in South Texas known as the Eagle Ford and Pearsall formations.

Peregrine is accused of using TXCO's secret information to acquire leases or other interest "in lands that are key to TXCO's business," including leases that TXCO was negotiating at the time it was engaging in talks with Peregrine.

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By: CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN (AP)

LAREDO, Texas -- A U.S. program that offers trusted trucking companies speedy passage across American borders has begun attracting just the sort of customers who place a premium on avoiding inspections: Mexican drug smugglers.
Most trucks enrolled in the program pause at the border for just 20 seconds before entering the United States. And nine out of 10 of them do so without anyone looking at their cargo.

The government keeps the list of participants secret, citing national security and trade secrets. But some of the 9,500 companies who are part of the system advertise their membership to drum up business, making them targets for smugglers, who can then threaten drivers or offer them bribes.

By Jennifer Bosavage

This fall, Microsoft was briefly barred from selling Word because of a dispute over XML code that i4i claimed infringed on one of the Toronto, Ontario-based company's patents. That trial is ongoing. While some observers questioned why Microsoft didn't resolve the dispute early on, others are interested to see how the dispute will play out and how patent rights will be determined

Alternatively, the inventor could rely on trade-secret law to protect the software. If trade secret (as opposed to patent) protection is used to protect the software, then the inventor must have appropriate safeguards in place, so that the software will, in fact, be classified as a trade secret by a court.

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By: Sing Tao Daily

After six days of deliberations, a federal jury in San Jose could not reach unanimous verdict on three important espionage charges against two Chinese engineers from Silicon Valley, according to Sing Tao Daily. Lan Lee , a 44-year-old U.S. citizen, and 36-year-old Chinese citizen Yuefei Ge stood on trial of five counts of stealing trade secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor. They were acquitted on two charges and the jury deadlocked on two. Legal experts believed the lack of evidence and the diverse jury, with five Asian jurors and a few who worked in the high tech industry, were the reasons.

Federal Judge James Ware returned the case to the prosecutors, who would decide whether to indict the two suspects with the no-verdict charges for the second time.

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By Andrew Longstreth

Months after Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide obtained an injunction in its Grishamesque trade secrets case against Hilton Hotels, the two sides have been talking settlement.

Starwood had alleged that Hilton and two of its executives stole confidential information from Starwood's files to develop Hilton's new Denizen hotels, which was to compete with Starwood's W Hotels. The complaint claimed that Hilton's tactics amounted to the "clearest imaginable case of corporate espionage, theft of trade secrets, unfair competition, and computer fraud."

To continue reading this interesting article from The AM Law Litigation Daily, click here.

By Brad Friedman
Northern NY News

Editor's Note: This in-depth study of the issues in NY-23's e-voting pilot program was written exclusively for The Gouverneur Times.

Sequoia's storied history of election failure began at least as far back as 2000, though the evidence of their duplicity would not become known -- and even then just barely -- until 2007 when seven whistleblowers from the company, including Quality Control employees, appeared on camera and by name in a breath-taking investigate report on HDNet.

The employees' stunning revelations were that they had been given no choice, despite protestation after protestation, to use inferior paper stock in making the ballots for Florida only in the 2000 Presidential Election.