Trade Secrets: This Week's News

Xconomy continues its coverage of the IRobot case with IRobot Seeks Sanctions Against Robotic FX in Alabama Case; In Other News, the DeLorean Has at Least Two Remaining Fans. The parties have an Alabama case as well as the previously commented on Massachusetts case: "...the Alabama case focuses on two iRobot patents the company says the Negotiator infringes upon...."

I admit that the following may not have much to teach but it is too fine a paragraph to pass up:

As we at Xconomy have come to expect from the filings in this case, last week’s offerings are chock full of quirky details and attorneys’ wry observations. One of my favorites from this batch is a footnote to the section of the brief describing the shredding of the CDs and wiping of hard drives: “To put Mr. Ahed’s actions in perspective, destruction of a mere 60 megabytes of data from a hard drive has been described as being ‘the equivalent of 29,297 typewritten pages.’…Here, Mr. Ahed destroyed at least six thousand times as much data. If this information was printed and stacked, it would reach more than ten miles into the sky. If Mr. Ahed had shredded this paper at the rate of one page per second, it would have taken him five and one-half years to destroy it—even assuming he worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (and took no breaks to buy new shredders).”

It does put in perspective the differences between digital and paper information. Something that the other news story also bears upon.

Information Week reports on Former DuPont Scientist Sentenced For Trade Secret Theft.

On Tuesday, a former DuPont scientist who admitted stealing company secrets was sentenced to serve 18 months in prison, fined $30,000, and ordered to pay almost $14,500 in restitution to DuPont.

Gary Min, 44, was sentenced in Wilmington, Del., for stealing DuPont trade secrets, an act he admitted to in November 2006. The maximum sentence for his offense is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Prior to sentencing, Min reportedly asked for leniency because incarceration would be a hardship on his family and because his actions did not result in significant financial loss to DuPont. The estimated value of the documents exceeded $400 million, according to the government.

I guess digital information played a part in IS & S case but I cannot tell from The Philadelphia Business Journal's IS&S wins trade secrets trial.

Innovative Solutions & Support Inc., maker of display systems, data equipment and computers for aircraft, said Wednesday a jury has awarded it a little more than $6 million in a trade-secret misappropriation trial.

The Exton, Pa.-based company said the jury unanimously found that each of the defendants had misappropriated IS&S' air data computer technology and that it had suffered damages of slightly more than $4.4 million in lost profits and $1.6 million in net profits earned by the defendants.

While the defendants contemplate their options of appealing the judgment, Indiana business owners might want to contemplate whether they can afford these kind of losses. If you think you cannot, then get with your business's lawyer and prepare yourself to prevent this kind of loss. I am available for consultation if your business does not have an attorney.