Early-stage companies seeking to grow, established companies looking to expand or repair facilities, and investment groups seeking to acquire companies often finance transactions with loans that are secured by assets of the company as collateral.  In many such transactions, intellectual property is a large portion of the collateral.  A lender who takes a security interest in IP must perfect its interest in the IP in order to obtain priority over others who might have interests in the IP.

So what are the procedures to perfect a security interest in IP?  It depends on the type of IP that serves as collateral.  Details follow below. Read the rest of this entry »

On June 10, the state of Connecticut enacted a new law requiring safeguards on the paper and electronic storage of personal information.  The new law, which takes effect October 1, 2008, may regulate any entity that stores credit card numbers, other account numbers, social security numbers, and other personally identifiable information.

According to a Privacy and Security Alert published by Peter Adler of Pepper Hamilton LLP:

To comply with the safeguard provisions of the Connecticut law, businesses will be required to classify the data they handle, identifying which of the data is personal information and map the flow of the personal information as it is received, processed, stored, transmitted and discarded. . . .  Personal information must by rendered unreadable before disposal. Simply erasing hard drives and other electronic media will not be sufficient, as erasure does not guarantee that electronic information is no longer recoverable.

For more details about the law and the full alert, click here.

Although not strictly limited to intellectual property, I found a recent article by my colleague Maureen Dwyer of the Pepper Hamilton labor and employment group to be very useful.  The article describes what an employer should do when it believes that an employee may be stealing from the company.  A Maureen discusses, investigation of the incident should include steps such as: Read the rest of this entry »

A recent opinion issued by the Federal Circuit serves as a reminder that IP assignment clauses of employment agreements and employer IP policies must be carefully worded.  A vague obligation relating to future inventions may create questions about patent ownership if an inventor-employee leaves the company or otherwise becomes unavailable to sign patent assignment documents. 

In DDB Technologies, L.L.C. v. MLB Advanced Media, L.P., an inventor entered into an employment agreement that stated: Read the rest of this entry »