On New Year’s Eve, a New York Times story discussed how the billions of dollars that consumers and businesses spend every year on antivirus software “rarely, if ever, block freshly minted computer viruses … because the virus creators move too quickly.” The increase in the number of viruses as well as their sophistication has forced
On December 2, 2012, he 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York issued a decision that Reuters said “may make it easier for US companies to crack down on alleged computer theft that occurs in remote locations, including outside the country.” Reversing a lower court ruling, the appeals court said American chemical company
Bloomberg News reported that a former GM engineer and her husband were convicted of stealing trade secrets on hybrid-car technology from the automaker to help develop similar vehicles in China. According to Bloomberg, ex-employee Shanshan Du allegedly copied GM’s private information on the motor control of hybrids and provided documents to her husband, Yu Qin. Qin allegedly
Kansas City, Missouri-based Hallmark Cards, Inc. has long been the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States ever since being founded over a century ago. For the past seven years, Hallmark had been engaged in a legal dispute with Monitor Company Group of Massachusetts. On November 19, 2012, the Kansas City Star reported
Canadian video game developer Silicon Knights was ordered to recall and destroy all of its games containing North Carolina-based Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 game engine. The video game news website Gamasutra reported on November 9, 2012, that North Carolina District Judge James Dever stated that Silicon Knights “repeatedly and deliberately copied significant portions of
The video game news website Gamasutra reported on October 31, 2012, that independent game studio Checkpoint is suing Japanese publisher Marvelous AQL and other parties for breach of contract, theft of trade secrets and other claims. Gamasutra reported that the complaint filed by Checkpoint CEO Brian Wiklem states that Marvelous paid the studio $2.5 million in startup costs
The United Kingdon’s Croydon Guardian reported on October 19, 2012, that 41-year-old Justin Success Brooks pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud after selling thousands of counterfeit cartridges of popular games for the Nintendo Wii, DS and DSi consoles. According to the Guardian, Brooks made an estimated £600,000 (over $962,000) from online sales of the
In many ways, California tends to err on the side of workers. Non-compete agreements are generally invalid altogether in the state. When it comes to trade secrets cases, California courts have rejected the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine, which claims that employees who go to work for a competitor inevitably disclose trade secrets to their new employer. Last week,
