Upcoming Trade Secret Law Learning

As regular readers of this blog know, I focus on providing content, and don’t often suggest programs to attend. However, it just so happens that over the course of the next week, there are three programs that all provide some helpful insights, each in a different way. The programs – in order of timing – are:

Year in Review: TM, Trade Secret: Patent, Copyright, Design Rights,” today (October 23) at 1:00 ET at this year’s American Intellectual Property Law Association Annual Meeting taking place now through 30, 2020. The trade secret portion will cover key developments concerning:

  • Identification of trade secrets
  • Nondisclosure agreements
  • The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
  • Legislative and regulatory efforts

Protecting Trade Secrets in the COVID Era.” This is a free event. It will be held on Tuesday, October 27, 2020, at 10:00 a.m. ET on Zoom. The panelists (in addition to me) are:

Panelists will cover a wide range of topics involving the protection of trade secrets, particularly while so many businesses are dealing with a remote workforce. Topics include:

  • Understanding the landscape
  • Evaluating and updating protections
  • Communication and compliance strategies
  • Addressing third party issues

Anyone who is unable to attend the live session should still register, as Lawyers Weekly will send a recording and the slides after the presentation.

Advanced Trade Secrets 2020: New Risks, New Challenges & Emerging Solutions,” on October 28. The program is a day-long, in-depth discussion of key issues in trade secret law, described as follows:

  • Learn what the courts, legislatures, prosecutors, government agencies and economic experts are thinking and doing about trade secrets issues
  • Find out how to make “reasonable” measures to protect trade secrets “workable” measures for your organization, particularly in a time of remote work
  • Understand the steps necessary for lawyers and clients to perform in the earliest days of a trade secret dispute
  • Mistakes happen. Explore the steps you need to take to ensure that mistakes do not jeopardize a development program
  • Review strategies to make sure your reverse engineering is clean engineering
  • Learn why domestic organizations need to think about international trade secrets enforcement, and what non-U.S. organizations need to know about U.S. litigation
  • Understand the “value” of a trade secret and the challenges in determining such

Program chair Vicki Cundiff and I will be covering:

  • Lessons from the courts: new insights into actual and threatened misappropriation; business deals gone bad; damages awards; protecting trade secrets in litigation; noteworthy prosecutions; and more
  • Protecting trade secrets in increasingly remote business relationships
  • Litigating trade secrets disputes in increasingly remote courtrooms
  • Is there a role for non-compete agreements in protecting trade secrets? Legislatures and the FTC weigh in

I hope you can come and learn.