19 Mar 2012
By Richard Neff

Data Breach Notification: “Uh oh! The personal data in our database has been hacked”

There is so much in the news about cyber-security. Much of the focus is on cyber war as a new and inevitable weapon, Stuxnet and the vulnerability of our national infrastructure. Some of the news is about use of computers to steal US technology and trade secrets, with culprits—if traceable—often located in China or Russia. It is definitely scary stuff, we all fear the prospect of several weeks without power, or endless gas lines should the oil pipeline infrastructure take a hit. However, companies face a much more mundane and growing risk: personal information in their possession is being stolen…
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17 Jun 2010
By Richard Neff

Demystifying the Nondisclosure Agreement

By Richard E. Neff, June 17, 2010: Reprinted and/or reposted with the permission of Daily Journal Corp. (2010). One of the shortest and simplest legal agreements is the nondisclosure agreement, sometimes called “confidentiality agreement.” A good nondisclosure agreement can be one page in length. It generally exists to cover just two scenarios: (the obvious one is to prevent the disclosure of a party’s confidential information to third parties (and to anyone who does not really need the information); and the less obvious one is to prevent the use by the recipient for anything but the limited purpose for which the…
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01 Jun 2010
By Richard Neff

Understanding Copyright ‘Fair Use’

By Richard E. Neff, June 1, 2010: Reprinted and/or reposted with the permission of Daily Journal Corp. (2010). "Fair use" of copyrighted works is one of the least understood concepts in American jurisprudence. Users of others' works implicitly understand that there are certain uses that they can make of copyrighted works without violating the owner's or author's copyright. Indeed, Section 107 of the U.S. copyright law provides a list of fair use purposes, including criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research. It is a concept linked to both knowledge advancement and free speech. However, many people tend to make…
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24 May 2010
By Richard Neff

Ownership Disputes in Technology Deals

By Richard E. Neff, May 24, 2010: Reprinted and/or reposted with the permission of Daily Journal Corp. (2010). One of the most fought-over issues in technology development and licensing agreements concerns intellectual property ownership. Superficially, who owns the intellectual property should be easy to resolve. The developer or publisher of a proprietary computer software program virtually always owns the computer program (except for possible open source components). Nobody contests Microsoft's ownership of Excel, or Autodesk's ownership of AutoCAD. At the other end of the spectrum, when a large company commissions a development house or even individual developer to do custom…
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17 May 2010
By Richard Neff

Managing Risk in Technology Licensing

By Richard E. Neff, May 17, 2010: Reprinted and/or reposted with the permission of Daily Journal Corp. (2010). In technology licensing the most difficult jumble of contractual issues generally involve the relationship between indemnification and limitation of liability, particularly the question of the patent indemnity. This is the "negative" lottery in technology contracts, a "loser pays all" provision if not drafted properly. At the heart of this issue is the great unknown surrounding software and business method patents. The United States took the lead in patenting software and computer-implemented inventions, and also in patenting business methods, often used to protect…
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