Hogan Lovells Trade Secrets Toolkit - Effectively safeguard your trade secrets and confidential know-how

Hogan Lovells has developed a Trade Secrets Toolkit to help businesses protect their trade secrets and confidential know-how. The Toolkit consists of four modules: Identify, Protect, Respond, and Commercialize. Each module has been designed to support innovators throughout the lifecycle of a trade secret. By drawing on the market leading expertise of our intellectual property, employment, privacy and cybersecurity professionals, the Toolkit will enable businesses to take into account a broad range of legal and commercial risks when developing their trade secrets strategies.

Identify

  • Comprehensive review of existing trade secrets and confidential know-how to identify and catalogue relevant assets.
  • Tailored questionnaires to improve your understanding of assets, circumstances of creation, protection mechanisms, whether they have been shared with third parties and under what conditions.
  • Guidance and best practice throughout the audit process.
  • Alignment with patenting activities.

Protect

Policies and systems

  • Counseling on corporate policies and best practices for protection of trade secrets and confidential information.
  • Identification and implementation of improved protection measures to reduce disclosure risks.
  • Support with the establishment of monitoring systems and solutions in collaboration with legal, HR,
  • IT and R&D departments.
  • Regular reviews of the monitoring parameters by working collaboratively across business units for continuous optimization.

Contract review

  • Review of employee contract templates relating to confidentiality and IP ownership.
  • Review of contract templates for NDAs, trade secret license or sale agreements, R&D, joint development, and other commercial agreements.
  • Review of ongoing and existing contracts with third parties involving relevant assets

Training

  • Training programs for new and existing employees covering the basic legal framework, company policies, procedures and compliance techniques.
  • Guidance and training for HR and IT departments on the onboarding and departure of employees.

Respond

  • Design and establishment of procedures to effectively respond to notifications of potential misappropriation, including the organization of a rapid response team.
  • Navigation of specific employee mobility situations implicating trade secret concerns, especially for senior management and engineers.
  • Direct internal corporate investigations.
  • Prepare and pursue, or defend, trade secret litigation in federal and state courts and before the ITC.

Commercialize

  • Support with the commercialization and exploitation of trade secrets assets.
  • Comparative analysis of country or state trade secret laws to select advantageous locations for R&D and/or manufacturing facilities.
  • Supervise independent development, reverse engineering, and “clean room” project structure and guidelines.

Our toolkit delivers:

  • Integrated legal solutions developed through a long history of working together on complex cross-border trade secrets matters.
  • A ‘one team worldwide’ approach enabling us to drive workflow efficiencies and leverage different legal regimes to your advantage.
  • First-class knowledge from market leaders in IP, employment, privacy and cybersecurity law.
  • Support from our pricing teams on the commercialization and exploitation of trade secret assets.
  • Cost-effective and transparent services through the use of technology and legal project management.

For more information and regional contacts please access this Toolkit under Additional Resources.

Contacts
Joe Raffetto
Partner
Washington, D.C.

 

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