By Julie Arrington
Forsyth News

A Forsyth County man pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal charges that he stole trade secrets from his former employer, Home Depot.

Sentencing for Guillermo Martinez, 47, is scheduled for 10 a.m. Feb. 3 before U.S. District Judge Willis B. Hunt Jr., according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.

The statement shows that in 2008, while working as a senior manager in product engineering for the home improvement retailer, Martinez provided a vendor with company trade secrets.

By: Margaret Lucas Agius
The Examiner

Acting U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg, joined by FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew G. Arena, announced that a federal indictment was unsealed today charging Saline resident Michael Hummel, 35, with wire fraud and theft of trade secrets from his former employer, Quicken Loans Inc.

The indictment alleges that Hummel was employed at Quicken as a Senior Web Developer and Senior Software Engineer from February 2005 to November 2006, working on the Web Interaction Team at Quicken's Livonia offices or from his residence. The indictment further alleges that Hummel stole a Quicken proprietary project, and used the stolen Quicken trade secrets and intellectual property in his consulting work for another company while still employed by Quicken.

Denver Business Journal

Colorado's Crocs Inc. has been accused in a lawsuit by Oregon's Columbia Sportswear Co. of misappropriating trade secrets, according to a news report.

The Oregonian newspaper of Portland reports on its website, OregonLine.com, that Portland-based Columbia (NASDAQ: COLM) added the accusation in an amendment to an existing lawsuit Tuesday in an Oregon court.

The suit also accuses Niwot-based Crocs (NASDAQ: CROX) of intentional contract interference and aiding and abetting breach of duty of loyalty. The suit asks that Crocs be ordered to give up profits, the Oregonian reports.

By: STEVE POPPER

INDIANAPOLIS - On the first day of the winter meetings, the Mets found themselves the subject of some of the biggest business. The only problem was that their contribution was issuing denials to rumored deals.

Omar Minaya says the tendency is to get trades out of the way before free agent signings. While the news centered on deals that were not done, Mets general manager Omar Minaya was moving hard to make some to begin to fill the holes in the team's roster.

Minaya said the pitching on the trade market behind Halladay is no better than the free agent class behind Lackey -- which would seem to push him to go free agency for that vacancy.

To read the complete news article from North Jersey, click here.

By Lisa Sibley
Cleantech Group

The Silicon Valley startup shutters its building as funding dries up, but the world may not have seen the last of its proprietary formula for lithium-ion batteries.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Imara is looking for buyers of its patents and technology, after abruptly shutting its doors yesterday. The company made rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that used nickel manganese cobalt chemistry.

Silicon Valley Bank has taken possession of the company's five to eight other patents and technology that are in process, Maguire said. The company's research and development team is "working to package those up" for potential buyers. Those patents are related to its scientists who have the "know how, the trade secret-type stuff," he said.

By Meera Venu

Hansen Medical HNSN reported Friday that it settled a lawsuit with Luna Innovations LUNA regarding a contract breach and trade secrets.

According to the terms of the agreement, Luna will pay Hansen $5 million in a promissory note over four years and issue shares equal to 10% of its shares. Hansen, along with fellow robotic device firm Intuitive Surgical ISRG , will gain access to Luna's fiber-optic shape sensing and localization technology, which could improve the navigational capabilities of the Sensei platform.

To read the totality of this news article from The Toronto Star, click here.

By Luke Jennett
Ames Tribune

A court of appeals decision today affirmed that the Iowa Department of Transportation must turn over a copy of a report it made on products from a company that supplies temporary traffic signals.

The suit was brought against the Iowa DOT and Horizon Signal Technologies by O.M.J.C. Signal, Inc., a competitor of Horizon that filed a petition for a declaratory judgment in Story County asking the court to determine whether Horizon was being held to compliance with federal standards regarding the temporary traffic signals it was providing to the DOT.

The court of appeals confirmed a district court ruling that the reports represented the results of standardized tests that did not represent protected trade secrets.

By CHARLES HUTZLER

Chinese police have detained an American automotive engineer for more than a year on accusations he misused trade secrets -- the latest case of vague secrecy laws being used against an American in China.

Hu Zhicheng, a prize-winning designer of industrial catalysts to control auto emissions, has had letters from his family censored and has been denied reading materials during his detention in the port city of Tianjin, said the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

The stern treatment is being meted out in a business dispute over an automobile technology. Hu told U.S. officials that investigators have threatened him with multimillion-dollar fines unless he gives the rights to his U.S.

To continue reading this interesting article from abc news international, click here.

By: Robin Wauters

Former Yodle employees Daniel Mousetis, Christopher Esgro and Ronald Pousson, who once ran Yodle's Philadelphia operations, allegedly helped competitor Local Internet Doctors (LID) to 'hack' Yodle's systems and steal proprietary data.

LID was founded by Pousson together with his partner Frank Norris, who is the fourth defendant in the suit and the alleged 'hacking' involved using an old user name and password to gain access to the system.

Fired June 5, 2009, Pousson allegedly began soliciting other Yodle employees, saying he had found work at a Yodle competitor, WebVisible. In reality, Pousson had founded Local Internet Doctors along with Norris, according to the complaint, to compete with Yodle directly.

To read this complete news article from TechCrunch, click here.

By Phil Goldstein
Fierce Wireless

Verizon Wireless filed a lawsuit against a former Alltel executive who has since joined Allied Wireless, a new company that will run some of the former properties and assets Verizon divested as part of its $28.1 billion purchase of Alltel.

Atlantic-Tele Network, which agreed to pay Verizon $200 million to acquire the divested wireless spectrum licenses and network assets, recently formed Allied as a subsidiary company. ATN said Allied would be headquartered in Little Rock, Ark. (where Alltel's headquarters were located), and would hire formerAlltel workers who had been laid off after Verizon's purchase.

By Marla Cone

Reversing a decade-old decision, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it plans to require pesticide manufacturers to disclose to the public the inert ingredients in their products. An inert ingredient is anything added to a pesticide that does not kill or control a pest. In some cases, those ingredients are toxic, but companies do not identify them on pesticide labels.

For 11 years, EPA denied petitions seeking disclosure of the chemicals but now the new administration says it plans to draft a rule that will increase transparency and encourage companies to replace toxic substances. Manufacturers worry about revealing trade secrets.

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

TC PALM

A Martin County jury Wednesday awarded nearly $300,000 to a Palm City plastics manufacturer.

The money is to be paid by a rival Port St. Lucie firm for civil damages related to misappropriating a trade secret in a legal dispute spanning more than a decade.

After a three-day trial, a six-member jury Wednesday found that Chemplex Industries of Palm City suffered financial losses after a former employee in 1998 stole a machine and its design to set up a similar company in Port St. Lucie, called Premiere Lab Supply.

By Graeme Moore

The lawyer for a man charged with giving trade secrets to an Indian company said Tuesday his client is not guilty.

Last Wednesday, the 15th Judicial Circuit Solicitor's Office arrested Flynn and charged him with misappropriation of trade secret information with intent to injure.

The warrant says Flynn was a former plant manager for Metglas in Conway who gave proprietary trade information to an India-based company.

During his tenure at Metglas, Flynn did "receive, obtain and possess trade secrets specific to Metglas technology," according to the warrant.

BY NATHAN PHELPS
GREENBAY PRESSGAZETTE

The previous owners of what is now The Grand filed a third-party civil complaint and counterclaim in Brown County Circuit Court late Monday afternoon, taking issue with the change in ownership earlier this month.

The move comes as both sides hammer out issues, including the legality of ownership, two weeks after Chad Schampers and Bill Thayse said they took ownership of operations at the facility.

The suit filed Monday by Sports Convention LLC lists 18 different parties involved in the case, including the current owners of operations at The Grand, formerly the S.C. Grand, and the property owners.