Law Office of Alicia Porter

Law.com had a recent article about the Silvaco Data Systems versus Circuit Semantics Inc. (CSI) Silvaco has taken the extreme measure of suing Circuit Semantics semiconductor customers as well, over the issue of stolen trade secrets.

In short, Silvaco alleged that customers who purchased the CSI software product received the Silvaco company’s program’s source code, which was a trade secret, and that the CSI customers should have known about the purloined trade secrets when they purchased the product.

For the full link, please see http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202428300991

There are some good intellectual property conferences that are coming up in the near future. Although the majority of the conferences are geared towards practicing attorneys, some of them are tailored also to law students and the general public.

The big one in Washington DC in December is the PTO day that the Intellectual Property Owners and Education Foundation. This year it’s on December 3, 2007.

The American Intellectual Property Law Mid Winter Institute starts around January 22 in Phoenix Arizona. They vary from year to year with regards to location, but it’s a nice opportunity to get away when it’s -40 in Alaska.

The American Bar Association puts on a solid conference in Washington D.C. in April.

And, for the individual inventors who want to get information straight from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, they offer traveling road shows throughout the year, but the big one is Inventor’s Day in September.

Also from an inventor’s perspective, the Hardware Show in Las Vegas is in May. This is a worthwhile opportunity for inventor’s to market their ideas to vendors and manufacturers.

For more information on any of them, please click on the links on the Blogroll.

Below is the current state statutory information regarding trade secrets

AS 45.50.910. Injunctive Relief For Misappropriation of Trade Secrets.

(a) A court may enjoin actual or threatened misappropriation of trade secrets. Upon application to the court, an injunction shall be terminated when the trade secret has ceased to exist, but the injunction may be continued for an additional reasonable period of time in order to eliminate commercial advantage that otherwise would be derived from the misappropriation.

(b) If the court determines that it would be unreasonable to prohibit future use of a trade secret, an injunction may condition future use upon payment of a reasonable royalty for no longer than the period of time the use could have been prohibited.

(c) In appropriate circumstances, affirmative acts to protect a trade secret may be compelled by court order.