Trade secret audit (reasonable efforts to keep secret) - ✔️✔️identifies all the valuable
forms of information possessed by the business
Once secret information is identified, the company must take reasonable measures to
keep the information secret:
- Locking away
- Securing electronic info
- Imposing confidentiality restrictions on those who have access to secret information
Intellectual property - ✔️✔️- Intangible
- Information
- Laws protect ownership of information
Knowledge and information something has that they don't want their competitors to
have
Knowledge assets - ✔️✔️How to make things, do thing, get things, sell things, buy
things, manage people
Types of Trade Secrets - ✔️✔️1. Technical
2. Scientific
3. Economic
4. Engineering
Justification for rights in intellectual property - ✔️✔️An exclusive right to what you
create, invent, and produce provides incentive to create, invent, and produce more
things
US Constitution - Article 1 section 8 - ✔️✔️grants power to "promote the progress of
science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the
exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Research and development - ✔️✔️Granting exclusive rights to intellectual property
(sometimes for a limited time) provides incentive to invest in research and development
The four main types of intellectual property - ✔️✔️trade secrets, patents, trademarks,
copyrights
Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) (reasonable efforts to keep secret) - ✔️✔️- A
contract where the owner of the info tells a third party that they may come into contact
with the info, and is signed promising that the third party will keep it a secret
, - A party who is granted access to secret information agrees to not disclose that secret
info
A trade secret is - ✔️✔️information that
- A company wants to keep secret
- Is not generally known to others
- Is not readily ascertainable by others
The owner of the info must make reasonable efforts to keep the info a secret
If you can figure it out on your own, it's not a trade secret - can't be protected
confidentiality agreement (reasonable efforts to keep secret) - ✔️✔️An employee
agrees to not disclose secret info learned while working for the employer
Misappropriation - ✔️✔️Fancy word for stealing
- Steal secret information
- Disclose secret information
- Acquire secret information from one who had a duty to keep secret (Must be aware of
the duty)
- Espionage (spy), computer hacking
Civil Enforcements of Trade Secrets - ✔️✔️An owner may sue another who
misappropriated (steals, discloses, uses) a trade secret
- Injunction (physically give me back the information), and sue
- Money damages - customers or profits lost as a result of stolen information
Patent law - ✔️✔️Patents are property rights associated with an invention
A patent conveys a right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the covered
invention
Obtaining a patent - ✔️✔️A patent is an exclusive right conveyed by the United States
Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) for a limited period of time
Plant patent - ✔️✔️- Protect new varieties of reproduced plants
- Easiest to recognize
Utility patent - ✔️✔️- Protect the way something is made or used
- Given for an invention that either makes something or makes something better
Design patent - ✔️✔️- Protect the way something useful looks
- Given for an invention that only makes something LOOK better, nothing to do with use
or utility of the item
Patent application - ✔️✔️PTO assigns a patent examiner to consider the application
Examiner and applicant communicate throughout the process