Our team helps you with your Trade Secret and concept by protecting your brand, product, and Trade Secret. We help you register your Trade Secret with the help of our experienced attorneys at COFFYLAW, LLC. Your Trade Secret attorney will help you file the Trade Secret application on your behalf, track the progress, provide you with updates throughout the registration process, and provide recommendations on the best way to protect your brand, idea, secret and intellectual property.
COFFYLAW, LLC has more than 80 years of combined experience in Trade Secret infringement. Our legal team includes ex-patent examiners, trade secret attorneys, inventors, business attorneys, and technical advisors in mechanical-electrical engineering, and computer technology. Whether preparing patent or trade secret, applications, reviewing trademark applications, negotiating corporate agreements, providing guidance, and direction for compliance with IP law, litigating in court, or reaching a settlement, COFFYLAW, LLC performed the full complement of trademark corporate services.
Drawing on years of experience in national and regional trade Secret law firms, representing a diverse client portfolio, including Fortune 500, mid-size companies, and entrepreneurs, COFFYLAW, LLC is positioned to strategically stay on top of the laws that affect our clients. COFFYLAW, LLC protects and defends your creations and inventions, preventing others from misappropriating what you have accomplished.
Trade secrets are the fourth type of intellectual property, in addition to patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Trade secrets consist of information and can include a formula, know-how, practice, pattern, design, instrument, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process not generally known or reasonably ascertainable by others, which allow an entity or business to obtain an economic advantage over competitors. To meet the most common definition of a trade secret, it must be used in business, and give an opportunity to obtain an economic advantage over competitors who do not know or use it. Broadly speaking, any confidential business information, which provides an enterprise a competitive edge may be considered a trade secret. There are three factors common to definitions of trade secret namely, (1) A trade secret is not generally known to the public; (2) A trade secret confers an economic advantage or benefit on its holder because the information is not publicly known; and (3) To maintain the secrecy of the trade secret, the holder exercises reasonable efforts.
The precise language by which a trade secret is defined varies by jurisdiction, as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret protection. However, clearly unfair practices with respect to secret information include industrial or commercial espionage, breach of contract, and breach of confidence.
Contrary to patents, trade secrets are protected without registration, that is, trade secrets are protected without any procedural formalities. Consequently, a trade secret can be protected for an unlimited period of time. For these reasons, the protection of trade secrets may appear to be particularly attractive for SMEs (small-medium enterprises). There are, however, some conditions for the information to be considered a trade secret. Compliance with such conditions may turn out to be more difficult and costly than it would appear at first glance.
On Wednesday, May 11, 2016, President Barack Obama signed into law the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) of 2016. DTSA amends chapter 90 of title 18, United States Code (commonly known as the “Espionage Act of 1996”) to provide federal jurisdiction for the theft of trade secrets “if the trade secret is related to a product or service used in, or intended for use in interstate or foreign commerce.” Specifically, 18 USC §1836 authorizes federal civil proceedings for misappropriation of a trade secret by employees as well as foreign entities. Prior to that day, trade secret protection was a matter of state law, except in New York and Massachusetts, which adopted some version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (‘UTSA”). DTSA does not preempt state law or any other provision of law. The salient provisions of the law are among others, treble damages, immunity for confidential disclosure to the government (whistleblower) or to an attorney, notice of immunity to employees, anti-retaliation lawsuit, ex-parte seizure order, injunctive relief, exemplary damages. A defense to a claim of trade secret misappropriation includes reverse engineering, independent derivation, or any other lawful means of acquisition.
We counsel clients on trade secrets matters such as:
