Trade secret

And so for comparability, those are the things I look for.

The other things you have to consider when you're considering comparability is, is there a most favored nations clause? What else is being included in that patent? Is it trade secrets? Is it know-how? Is it everything under the sun? Because that can be very indicative of either comparability or lack thereof.

Is it a step-down license? I'll mention that in a bit when it comes to trade secrets.

But those are the things that I look for.

In all my career, I've probably seen truly comparable licenses a handful of times and makes it very difficult for us.

So that is another aspect to think about.

I would like to turn to another important piece of looking at licensing.

We've been talking a lot about patents, obviously, but there are some clients, we have companies, of course, that are now finally looking at the value of trade secrets.

And that's by design just walking past these racks.

If you happen to notice a company you're familiar with and seeing what servers and, and networking harbor they use, those are some trade secrets.

And then Equinix takes it a step further.

Notice the lights in this place.

We can regulate it with passing law, with trade secrecy and everything.

But then we always have to think about the human kind of user of that technology that probably doesn't have any idea of the trade secrets and the patent behind it.

And it's probably either like a normal kind of user, like I could be using Claude or ChachiPT to ask for advice on a specific symptom that I have, or it could be a medical professional who is very interested and very used to dealing with the medical side, but obviously cannot deal with technology.

probably doesn't understand if there is an issue where it's coming from.

They are embedded in the legacy aerospace supply chain in a way that a company like Joby simply is not yet.

And a federal jury has now found that Joby violated AeroSonic's trade secrets.

The jury awarded AeroSonic nearly one hundred and seventeen million dollars in damages.

Joby is asking the federal court to overturn that verdict entirely.

That process takes years.

One hundred and seventeen million dollars could sit in legal limbo for a long time before anyone writes a check.

The specific nature of the trade secrets at issue, what AeroSonic developed, how Joby allegedly used it, those details come from the court record and AeroTime, which broke this story, is reporting that the full picture is still emerging from post-trial filings.

I'm not going to speculate about the underlying technology beyond what the record supports.

So copyright, while it can be relevant particularly with collections of facts or content that has any originality to it, when it comes to pure data, copyright is likely not a real protection or not a real issue.

What is most likely to be a factor are trade secret and confidential information type rights.

Trade secrets are basically information that's secret.

It's pretty simple and it's actually a pretty intuitive principle.

data's value is generally derived from it not being either readily known to others or not as readily accessible as a company is able to provide it to their clients and customers.

Rights and data, though, are subject to the extent it's personal data to significant restrictions when it comes to rights of publicity, rights of privacy, and regulatory burdens, which Barry will get into in a bit.

When it comes to rights and data, one key way to think about it, and this ties into Trade Secret, is rights and data are what you're able to enforce both with technical measures to prevent others from accessing that data, but also with contractual measures.

What contractual terms are you able to define when it comes to data that you obtain from others? And what contractual terms are you able to enforce when you provide data to others for their use? We'll go through.

Yes, oftentimes it comes with a few things.

It's incredible financial exposure, right? If this is a contract that we cannot survive without and it's being breached, if it is the keys to the kingdom and trade secrets that just walked out the door, if it is potential liability with the government or claims of regulatory mishandling, that's when you know this isn't just a dispute with a vendor or a breach of contract.

If this goes sideways, we're done.

Right.

And it's worth fighting for.

And so we fight those fights to protect what you've built and to say we're not going to lay down and just give it up because of one of these issues.

We're going to fight for those trade secrets.

We're going to fight to be paid under that contract or we're going to defend ourselves when it comes to this potential regulatory mishandling rather than just lay down and die.