A basic intellectual property presentation relating to patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret issues at the Alexandria Small Business Development Center.

1. A Tale of Two Small
Businesses & An IP
Fracas
Antigone Peyton
Cloudigy Law

18. Setting the Stage
Doomsday has a patent covering parts of the Super Public Defender software
program
Doomsday hasn’t registered anything with the Copyright Office
Doomsday considers its customer list a trade secret
It uses a basic employee and contractor agreement that doesn’t say anything
about Intellectual Property rights
Doomsday thinks it’s wrong for Heaven’s Arms to use some of its website
material for a website associated with Heaven’s Arms’ games

19. Super Public
Defender Patent

20. Software Patents

21. Patent Analysis
Compare Patent Claims to Final Appeal
software product
If product is covered, then it infringes
the patent
Doesn’t matter whether Heaven’s Gate
knows about patent
Doomsday can get money or an
injunction

22. Heaven’s Arms
Website

24. Website
No registrations
Copyright
Text, Images, maybe some code
Trademark
Icons, Logos, Images

25. Trade Secrets

26. Trade Secrets
Customer list can be a trade secret in
some circumstances
Depends on what Doomsday does to
protect it and whether it treats it like a
trade secret

27. Factors to Consider
Employee & contractor agreements
restrict access & use
Technical and practical steps taken to
protect it
Competitive advantage to business to
keep it a trade secret
Each situation is different

28. Jack Ryan’s Software
Code

29. Employee Agreements
They don’t discuss what happens if
employees invent something, or create
something that is protectable by
trademark, copyright, or trade secret law
Problem!!

30. Jack Ryan’s Work
Code for several software games
made up some game images for the
company
created some artwork for several games
added potential customer contacts he
knew personally to the customer list

31. What We’ve Learned

32. Questions??
Antigone Peyton, Esq.
President & Founder, Cloudigy Law
(703) 436-2033
antigone.peyton@cloudigylaw.com
Twitter: @antigonepeyton; @cloudigylaw
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CloudigyLaw
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/antigonepeyton
Cloudigy blog: http://cloudigylaw.com/news/