Posts Tagged: "ip theft"

The Wall Street Journal explains ithat the Silicon Valley culture has long regarded copying as a good thing and necessary for rapid growth, first to market, first mover advantage, network effects, world domination, liquidity for early investors and Founders, etc. What complete and total garbage. When you live in a culture that tolerates and even promotes copying that is, in fact, what you get. When everyone copies everyone that means no one is innovating. Many studies and articles in recent years have highlighted how we have a net loss of startups over the past 30 years and that companies are no longer innovating.

Joseph and Adriana Shayota were recently found guilty of manufacturing and selling millions of counterfeit bottles 5-hour ENERGY. They were kingpins in a criminal ring of 11 people charged with the counterfeiting. Eight of the conspirators have already plead guilty and one is a fugitive. Their clandestine factory was located in San Diego, and employed more than 50 workers working two shifts per day. They manufactured about 4.3 million counterfeits, all of which were either consumed or seized by 2012.

During the recruiting process and job interviews, open dialogues and an exchange of ideas take place between the job applicant and the company. However, when intellectual property is involved, both employers and applicants must walk a fine line between building trust versus over-disclosure. Here are some guidelines every prospective employee and employer should know about intellectual property and the interviewing process.

In recent years, the Chinese government has promoted a roadmap towards “indigenous innovation” which would see the country become a technological superpower by the year 2050. This would be fine if China intended to do so while following international rules regarding intellectual property, but it seems pretty intent on flouting whatever regulations get in the country’s way in that regard. News reports in recent years indicate that China continues to press foreign entities to follow joint venture rules in which foreign players are required to transfer IP to Chinese domestic firms despite the fact that this breaks rules put in place by the World Trade Organization, of which China has been a member since 2001.

The ownership of ideas and creations are among the most valuable assets to any company. Businesses invest in these ideas and rights and use the value they create to help promote and grow business for years to come. Printer manufacturers, for example, invest heavily in new ink and toner technologies and realize a return over the life of the device through the sale of supplies and consumables. When third-party supplies manufacturers, particularly manufacturers of new build ‘cloned products’, violate IP rights and take products to market, they are effectively stealing from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) – reducing the ability of the OEM to realize the full potential of their investment and, through their sale, securing financial benefit from the OEM who receives no compensation for this lost revenue. These organizations effectively take a ‘free ride’.

At a minimum, two-factor authentication rather than a single password, should be used to protect most types of confidential data. With two-factor authentication, the user is required to use two of the following three forms of identification – something they know (password or PIN), something they possess (a token or USB stick) or a physical characteristic of the user (finger swipe) in order to gain access to the data. For more sensitive data, a multi-factor approach offers an even higher degree of security. In multi-factor authentication, a user must use three or more forms of identification. For example, in addition to a password and a token, users are required to answer one or more custom questions, known only to the user.

The USPTO has also created an increasingly sophisticated cyber security defense system to protect the nation’s patents and related information. In this multi-layered system, the USPTO guards against virtually every possible type of intrusion, protecting their systems against a multitude of potential denizens, from lone wolf to suspected nation-state Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attackers. Compared to the USPTO, or even corporations, most law firms are easy targets and the client IP on their networks is low hanging fruit that is all too easily harvested. Too many law firms still view ‘reasonable’ security as signature-based (passwords) access and malware protection, like McAfee, as good enough. Today, it is not nearly enough.