For our weekly SoCal IP Institute meeting on Monday, October 2, 2017, we will discuss the following cases:

Lombardo v. Dr. Seuss, (S.D.N.Y. September 15, 2017) (available here). Lombardo created a comedic play entitled “Who’s Holiday” based off of the Dr. Seuss book “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. Lombardo sued for declaratory judgment which the court granted. The court found Lombardo’s play was a parody and thus constituted fair use.

PEO Experts CA, Inc. v. Engstrom, (E.D. Cal September 21, 2017) (available here). PEO Experts is in the business of helping companies find administrative services. They also make all of their sales representatives and managers (some of whom are independent contractors) sign NDAs acknowledging the company’s data is a trade secret. A few managers and contractors left the company to form a new business, PEO alleged that they misappropriated trade secret information. The court granted a preliminary injunction against some of the managers, but did not grant the injunction against the independent contractors, because they partially owned the created trade secrets.

All are invited to join us on October 2, 2017, at noon in our Westlake Village office. This activity is approved for 1 hour of MCLE credit. If you will be joining us, please RSVP to Elisha Manzur by 9 am Monday morning.