Aaron Charfoos, Victor Johnson and Dante Stella Quoted in Inside Counsel

Aaron Charfoos, Chicago-based member of Dykema’s Intellectual Property Practice Group and Litigation Department, Victor Johnson, Dallas-based member in the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice Group, and Dante Stella, Detroit-based member in Dykema’s Business Litigation practice, head of the firm’s electronic discovery practice and co-chair of the firm’s Discovery Management Group, were quoted in the Inside Counsel article, “Paper trail blazers.”

The article covers the considerations about sensitive data that will arise regarding discovery in IP litigation, namely because the cases are typically involve a lot of documentation and some of those documents could contain details invaluable to an organization's proprietary processes or operational secrets. Charfoos pointed out that IP litigation cases tend to involve sensitive financial documents, such as cost structures, research and development budgets and profit margins—often in the form of electronic documents, paper documents and source code production.

Johnson recommended that legal teams ensure that appropriate attention is devoted to redacting any irrelevant information from documentation, require multiple levels of review for sensitive documents, and build in basic quality-control procedures to catch mistakes. Stella pointed out that no combination of methods is foolproof, but that safeguards are generally effective to mitigate the disclosure of sensitive data—and thereby maintaining claims of trade secret protection by making all reasonable efforts.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.