Imagine That IP Law Blog

What if someone told you not all clauses in a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) are created equally? This was one of several lessons that could be drawn from Sionyx LLC v. Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., 981 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2020) which involved an NDA that contained several clauses, some of which ended up being more important than others.

At the beginning of their engagement in or around 2006-2007, SiOnyx was a startup and Hamamatsu was an established manufacturer interested in the technology that SiOnyx was developing. The parties entered into an NDA to allow them to share confidential ... Read More ›

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts announced new security procedures to protect confidential filings on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. The changes come in the wake of a massive cybersecurity breach identified in December 2020. The breach involved a known compromise of third-party provider products, and has affected a number of federal agencies, including the Departments of Energy, Commerce, State, and Treasury. The Judiciary uses an impacted product for IT network monitoring and management and; consequently, its online filing system has been jeopardized.

In ... Read More ›

Issue preclusion and claim preclusion are two strategic defenses that an accused infringer can rely upon if that party was previously cleared of patent infringement.

Issue preclusion, or collateral estoppel, precludes a party from relitigating an issue actually decided in a prior case and necessary to the judgment. Under claim preclusion, or res judicata, a judgment on the merits in a prior lawsuit bars a second lawsuit involving the same parties or their privies based on the same cause of action. Claim preclusion also bars claims that could have been brought in the first action ... Read More ›