Trade Secret Asset Management 2018: A Guide to Information Asset Management Including RICO and Blockchain

"Trade Secret Asset Management 2018" is intended to serve company employees, owners, and attorneys as a quick course in the essential issues surrounding the identification and management of trade secret intellectual property, yet it is comprehensive enough to provide the reader with a working understanding of the nature of proprietary trade secret information and its proper stewardship. It is intended for and accessible by both attorney and non-attorney readers who need an understanding of trade secret matters for the performance of their roles within the company. This book will give the reader the vocabulary and conceptual framework required to meaningfully discuss trade secret matters with counsel.

"Trade Secret Asset Management 2018" is divided into four main sections. The first section, comprising Chapters 1 through 4, defines trade secret information, discusses the manner in which trade secrets are defended in court, and considers at some length the various ways in which trade secret property rights in information can be lost.

Chapters 5 through 11 discuss the all-important security issues surrounding trade secret information in considerable detail, including securing proprietary information against both insider and outsider threats, establishing a trade secret culture, monitoring for trade secret information in the public domain, and the often ignored issue of inbound security. Also included in this section are suspect profiles of trade secret misappropriators, both domestic and foreign.

Chapters 12 through 15 discuss accounting for trade secrets, a more recent development in the proper stewardship of proprietary information, including the inventory, identification, classification, valuation, and reporting of trade secrets, as well as trade secret life-cycle management and trade secret audits.

The final section considers the future of trade secret asset management. Chapter 16 discusses the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, including the drivers for its passage, the terms of the Act, and our view on its implications for trade secret management into the future. Chapter 17 discusses the RICO provisions of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 in detail. Chapter 18 discusses automated trade secret asset management, its methods, benefits, and implications for the future, including the role of blockchaining in protecting trade secrets. Chapter 19 discusses the Trade Secret Examiner® system, a commercially available trade secret asset management system applying the authors' principals.

The Appendices include various materials supportive of the text, including the texts of relevant laws and illustrative court decisions in trade secrets cases. Of special interest to many readers will be an extensive trade secret checklist for a typical manufacturing company and a sample trade secret exit interview form. New for this edition are Appendix D, a list of documents required in performance of the trade secret audit of Chapter 15, Appendix G, a list of Trade Secret Examiner® system features, and Appendix H, an analysis of the DTSA changes to the EEA by Dennis Crouch.

R. Mark Halligan is a trial lawyer and Partner in the Chicago Office of FisherBroyles, LLP, a national, full service law firm designed for the 21st Century. Mark is an Adjunct Professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago where he teaches Advanced Trade Secret Law. Mark is widely recognized as one of the leading worldwide experts in trade secrets law and trade secret asset management.

Richard F. Weyand is president of the Trade Secret Office, Inc., which is developing software to automate the management methods described in TSAM 2018. He has served as a testifying technical expert in trade secrets cases involving computers, communications, and physics, and performed forensic examination of electronic evidence in trade secrets cases.