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• The California Supreme Court's Opinion Regarding Interference with At-Will Employment Relationships: Clear Sailing or Opening the Floodgates for Litigation? ( February 2005 )
  

  In a stated effort to promote and encourage fair and lawful competition, on August 12, 2004, a unanimous California Supreme Court rendered its decision in Reeves v. Hanlon, 33 Cal. 4th 1140 (2004). The central issue in Reeves was whether inducing an at-will employee to breach an employment relationship could give rise to liability for the employee's new employer.

• Customer Non-Solicitation Provisions Are Unenforceable Unless No More Restrictive Than Necessary to Protect Legitimate Trade Secrets ( August 2004 )
  

  The California Court of Appeal's published opinion in Thompson v. Impaxx, Inc. (2003) is important because it concludes that customer non-solicitation provisions are enforceable only to the extent necessary to protect an employer's legitimate trade secrets. The employee in Thompson sought to build upon the decision in D'Sa v. Playhut, Inc. and prevailed because the covenant not to compete was not limited to the protection of the employer's property, trade secrets, or other proprietary information.

• Common Intellectual Property Mistakes of Start-Up Firms ( February 2004 )
  

  The practice of intellectual property law often entails dealing with the consequences of past mistakes that are made at the formation or early stages of a company, when the primary focus is on the company's growth and survival, and resources for legal advice are scarce. At such times, companies often overlook or are unaware of intellectual property issues that can give rise to liability and undermine the protection of their intellectual property.

• Protecting Trade Secrets is Important to Your Business: How to Implement a Trade Secrets Program ( November 2003 )
  

  Businesses of every size derive independent economic value and a competitive advantage from a diverse range of "secrets". A "Trade Secret" is broadly defined, and can include recipes, business plans and designs, as well as the results of reverse engineering of another's product. Even negative information can be protected as a trade secret, because it is often valuable to know what does <i>not</i> work to avoid wasting time and resources pursuing a dead end.

• The Top 10 Ways to Protect Your Ideas and Your Business ( May 2003 )
  

  Ways to protect your ideas and your business.

• What is Intellectual Property?: Trade Secret Law ( May 2003 )
  

  What rights do you have under trade secret law?

• Managing Your Intellectual Property ( May 2003 )
  

  Intellectual Property, or "products of the mind," is generally classified as Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, or Trade Secrets. Each form of Intellectual Property is subject to its own set of laws and rules on how it is created, protected, maintained, and utilized. While future articles will address each of these in more detail, this article will focus on the need to keep a close watch on the details of your Intellectual Property so that you can protect them and get value from them.

• California Court Rejects "Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine" But Acknowledges Availability of Injunctive Relief for the Almost Indistinguishable "Threatened" Disclosure of Trade Secrets ( March 2003 )
  

  The so-called "inevitable disclosure doctrine" assumes that if an employee has knowledge of trade secrets, and accepts a similar job with a direct competitor in a highly competitive industry, he or she will "inevitably" disclose the trade secrets in the course of performing his or her new employment duties.

• The Cutting Edge of Trade Secret Law ( December 2002 )
  

  This article discusses two cutting edge issues in this context. (1) Whether a former employee can be stopped from using trade secrets retained in memory-&rdquo;misappropriation by memory.&rdquo; (2) Whether a former employee can be prevented from working in a job that would result in the inevitable use of trade secrets-&rdquo;inevitable disclosure.&rdquo;

• Enforceability of Non-Disclosure Agreements Covering Information That Is Not a Trade Secret ( June 2002 )
  

  Non-disclosure agreements are the first line of defense for a licensor of intellectual property. A recent decision in the Seventh Circuit, IDX Systems Corporation v. Epic Systems Corporation, University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, Mitchell Quade and Michael Rosencrance, 285 F.3d 581 (April 1, 2002) reaffirmed the enforceability of such agreements after a lower court attempted to limit their scope by drawing analogies to employee non-competition agreements.