Case study example
Identify if there is an intellectual property at issue here. If so, what type?
- Subject
- Business & Management
- Type
- Case study
- Level
- Undergraduate
- Length
- 5 pages
About this sample
The paper examines a business scenario in which an employee, Sam, takes client lists from ABC Paper Co. to competitor XYZ Paper Co. in breach of a non-disclosure agreement. It identifies trade secrets as the intellectual property involved, then assesses the ethics of Sam's and XYZ's conduct and whether tort or criminal liability applies. The work is organised as a sequence of answers to bolded study questions, with a closing list of key facts from the scenario.
- Trade secrets as intellectual property
- Non-disclosure and non-compete agreements
- Business ethics and employee loyalty
- Business torts and negligence
- Causation and liability
How it opens
The type of intellectual property demonstrated in this scenario is;
Trade Secrets
Many firms would like to learn trade secrets of their competitors. For example, according to a recent article in the Financial Times "workers in a subsidiary of a U.S. pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson were given 'Inspector Clouseau' and 'Columbo' awards for snooping on competitors" (Tyler, 1997). Many times, there are more subtle ways to learn the competitors' trade secrets, for instance by hiring a competitor's senior manager. In 1993, an affair surrounding the defection of Jose Ignacio Lopez, the chief of purchasing for General Motors (GM), to Volkswagen (VW) received a lot of media attention. Lopez, and several other former GM executives he took along, allegedly brought to VW lists of suppliers, prices, terms of delivery, and other trade secrets regarding the GM German subsidiary Adam Opel. To settle the affair, VW agreed out of court to pay GM $100 million in damages. Even though the Lopez case is not a typical one, as it involves allegations of outward stealing, it gives an idea of how much can be in stake if a company's key executive officer defects to competition. Quoting again from the same article in the Financial Times "The problem is the loyalty-or lack of it-of employees in a world of short contracts, rapid turnover and big inducements."
Trade secret is a type of intellectual property whereby companies keeps process, device, formula, or other business information private in order to give them an advantage over their competitors.
The opening section, transcribed from the PDF. The full paper continues below.
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Using an example well
Read it for how the paper is built, not for wording to reuse: how the introduction frames the question, how each paragraph moves from a claim to evidence, and how sources are cited. Submitting any part of it as your own work would be plagiarism, and it is written for a different brief than yours.
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