When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
masslawblog.com
When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
1–10 of 89 posts
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#2Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#3Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
Why do you say no NDAs were signed? Levandowski signed a NDA. Here's a quote from one of Waymo's filings.
> Waymo also requires all employees, contractors, consultants, vendors, and manufacturers to sign confidentiality agreements before any confidential or proprietary trade secret information is disclosed to them.
Edit: I screwed up the original quotation and had one that said he signed a NDA with Uber instead of Waymo. I've replaced it with a similar quote (also from a Waymo filing) saying he signed a NDA with Waymo...
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#4Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
It's technically a type of intellectual property, like a patent. If no agreements are in place, it's still infringement.
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#5Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
Trade secrets are intellectual property which is ... property. So stealing trade secrets is stealing property which is theft.
You can develop what is the equivalent of a trade secret. That is the risk and you have to make efforts to keep the secret a secret. But if an employee copies your trade secret that’s theft.
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#6Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
there's also of course the possibility that uber violated the CFAA if someone exfiltrated data from waymo, though the distinctions re: access without autorization and access that exceeds authorization are quite nuanced.
if "uber-spy" had authorized access to many secrets, intended all along to steal it and bring it to uber, dumped a ton of data, then left and carried out their plans to give the data to uber, case law says "uber-spy" didn't violate any clauses of the CFAA, whether they signed an NDA or not ("contract based restrictions" are rarely if ever considered unauthorized access per the CFAA). however, there are many gotchas that can hook that data into access in excess of authorization (exfiltrating it on company property, even printed pages for example).
once you have a nexus to get a CFAA violation in, you can start bringing in intent and monetary gain and such and potentially even get into easy to prove strict liability offenses.
given the description of their anonymous server, secret phone team, there's a pretty good chance that stuff alone will open them up to CFAA based prosecution, which could go very badly. who knows though.
if you're interested in this sort of stuff, which may be tangential to uber/waymo (i'm not sure / don't care) , orin kerr is the person to read.
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#7Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
[deleted]
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#8Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
Why do you say no NDAs were signed? Levandowski signed a NDA. Here's a quote from one of Waymo's filings. > Waymo also requires all employees, contractors, consultants, vendors, and manufacturers to sign confidentiality agreements before any confidential or proprietary trade secret information is disclosed to them. Edit: I screwed up the original quotation and had one that said he signed a NDA with Uber instead of Wa…
[deleted]
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#9Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
Trade secrets are intellectual property which is ... property. So stealing trade secrets is stealing property which is theft. You can develop what is the equivalent of a trade secret. That is the risk and you have to make efforts to keep the secret a secret. But if an employee copies your trade secret that’s theft.
No, copyright infringement isn't theft even if it has been characterized as "stealing intellectual property". Intellectual property is a broad term without any real meaning.
Copyrights don't have to be registered to have effect. Patents do. Trademarks can be either. If you don't defend a trademark, you lose it. If you don't defend against copyright or patent infringement, you can just wait. Patents last for 20 years. Copyright lasts for life of the author + 70 years, or 95 years (publication date)/120 years (creation date) for corporations. Registered trademarks are renewed every 10 years; potentially indefinitely (?)
You can't make any assumptions about trade secret law based on other "types" of "intellectual property" without actually reading and knowing the laws around trade secrets.
Re: When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers
#10Could anyone explain why trade secrets are something you can sue over if no NDAs or similar have been signed?
It's technically a type of intellectual property, like a patent. If no agreements are in place, it's still infringement.
Is that really true? Is there something I can read for a better understanding?