Recent Technology Articles

Articles related to our Technology Practice. We help clients understand, investigate, clear, protect, transfer and license their intellectual property rights, and we draft, review and negotiate related legal agreements.

Proposed Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016

Historically in the U.S., trade secrets have generally been protected by state law under each state’s version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). The UTSA was published in 1979 in an effort to provide a unified legal framework for protecting trade secrets. A trade secret is a non-public or confidential information which is protected… Read more »

Software Copyright Owners, Make Your License Agreements, Exclusive Distribution Rights Explicit, and Keep Copies!

When a person accused of infringing a software copyright raises a “first sale defense” (which allows the lawful owner of copies of copyrighted material to sell the copies without the copyright owner’s permission (17 U.S.C. § 109(a)) and produces sales invoices, then to defeat the defense the copyright owner must produce the specific license agreement under… Read more »

“Offensive” Trademarks Allowed – for Now…

The First Amendment bars the federal government from rejecting a trademark that some people may find offensive, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Tuesday, overturning a 70-year-old provision of federal law.  In In re Tam, by a 9-3 vote, the court struck down a provision of the 1946 Lanham Act… Read more »