Insights

Washington — January 12, 2022: Crowell & Moring has published Litigation Forecast 2022: What Corporate Counsel Need to Know for the Coming Year. The tenth-annual Litigation Forecast focuses on the intersection of technology, litigation, and intellectual property, including significant changes to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board process, the impact of Google v. Oracle on copyright, new developments in the biopharma space, shifting FTC enforcement strategies, and more. The Litigation Forecast provides forward-looking insights from leading Crowell & Moring lawyers to help legal departments anticipate and respond to challenges that might arise in the year ahead.

Washington – May 13, 2021: The National Black Lawyers has selected six Crowell & Moring lawyers for inclusion in its Top 100 Black Lawyers and Top 40 Under 40 Lawyers lists. Membership in the organization is by invitation only and is limited to the top lawyers in each region, selected based on their “reputation for providing excellent legal representation and [being] leaders in their respective practice areas.”

Washington – January 4, 2021: Crowell & Moring elected nine lawyers to the firm’s partnership, effective January 1, 2021. The firm also promoted 18 associates to the position of counsel. The new partners have been promoted from within the ranks of the firm’s Washington, Los Angeles, and New York offices and from across several practice groups, including Advertising & Media, Environment & Natural Resources, Litigation, International Trade, Antitrust & Competition, Government Contracts, and Intellectual Property.

Last week, we discussed COVID-related developments in the federal courts of appeals and federal district courts, noting the wide variety of measures that those courts have taken to adjust their operations in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state courts have taken a similarly wide range of measures to address this crisis, drastically altering many of their operations. State courts have been even more varied in their approach than the federal courts, with different levels of courts within the same state taking different (and sometimes potentially conflicting) actions. For example, the California Supreme Court and six appellate divisions have automatically extended all deadlines set forth in the California Rules of Court by 30 days—but those extensions have different effective dates and will expire on different days in mid- to late April. Moreover, those blanket extensions do not appear to cover filing deadlines for notices of appeal or designations of the record in the superior court. To complicate matters further, some of the California courts do not allow e-filing, suggesting that filings may still need to be submitted at the court house drop box—despite the fact that many courts are ostensibly closed to the public.

On April 18, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York unsealed an indictment accusing Zheng Xiaoqing, a former senior engineer for steam turbine design at GE, and Zhang Zhaoxi, a Chinese national, of conspiring to steal GE’s design data and models, engineering drawings, material specifications, configuration files, and other proprietary trade secret information related to GE’s turbine technology. The indictment provides yet another cautionary tale to companies trying to protect their trade secrets.

A recent decision from the Eighth Circuit serves as a reminder that trade secret holders must not sleep on their rights when presented with information that would put a reasonable person on notice of potential misappropriation. See CMI Roadbuilding, Inc. v. Iowa Parts, Inc., No. 18-1075, 2019 WL 1474022 (8th Cir. Apr. 4, 2019). The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant, confirming that the plaintiff’s claims under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and Iowa Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) were time barred, and rejecting the plaintiff’s tolling argument as a matter of law.

Crowell & Moring Chairman Kent Gardiner and Washington, D.C.-based partner Kirsten Nathanson and counsel Astor Heaven are interviewed by The Washington Post regarding the firm's Sponsorship initiative. The program, which is the first law firm initiative of its kind in the country, connects partners with young lawyers to fully develop their talents and enhance their careers. Gardiner told the Post, "If you enhance the diversity and perspectives and ways of thinking about a problem based on different life experiences, different approaches, you create more opportunity for innovation."

Astor Heaven will be participating as a panelist and moderator at the 2021 Annual Meeting of The Sedona Conference Working Group (WG12) on Trade Secrets.  The WG12 will be comprised of drafting teams that will lead discussion on various trade secret related topics, with the ultimate goal of advancing draft commentary for publication.  Astor will be leading a discussion on “Sharing Trade Secrets With Other Organizations.”

Astor Heaven will be speaking at AIPLA's 2021 Trade Secrets Summit on November 8 at 1:45 PM CT. He will speak on a panel titled, "What’s New in Non-Competes and Trade Secrets? State law updates to noncompete and trade secrets law (including CA)". 

The MCCA's Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference is designed to provide practical tools and resources that individual attorneys, both in-house and at outside law firms, need to further personal career growth and meet organizational diversity goals, and that organizations need in order to build a better workplace. Conference highlights include a morning plenary session featuring the Honorable Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (who became, when appointed a District Court Judge in the Southern District of New York, the first Asian American appointed to a federal judgeship outside the 9th Circuit) and a lunch plenary session on “Race, Gender, Media and the Law.”

Join us for a webinar discussion as we cover what you need to know about the big cases, changes, and developments relating to trade secrets from the past year. Our discussion will cover three key areas:

Make plans to join members of Crowell & Moring’s Education Group for a two-part overview of where the regulations and polices may be headed in the new Biden Administration. We will also highlight hot topics and new developments for 2021. Topics to be discussed include:

Make plans to join members of Crowell & Moring’s Education Group for a two-part overview of where the regulations and polices may be headed in the new Biden Administration. We will also highlight hot topics and new developments for 2021. Topics to be discussed include: