Intellectual Property and Assessing its Financial Value

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Intellectual Property and Assessing Its Financial Value

If a party under a duty of confidentiality to the trade secret owner

breaches that duty, the owner’s enforcement effort will benefit from a

written agreement that clearly recognizes the trade secret status of the

information.

Reverse engineering of trade secrets

Under patent law, a subsequent inventor can be liable even though

the invention was developed completely independently and without

knowledge of the patented invention. Under trade secret law, independent

discovery and use of the trade secret are not a violation.

Companies often try to discover one another’s trade secrets through