i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Pursuant to this morning's discussion about knowledge and who owns it, I think you might find this case particularly interesting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_v._Papermaster. Yes, it's a Wikipedia link, but I wrote it as an assignment for Brian Carver's IP Law for the Info Industries class last year, so you can trust it. I wrote Papermaster's Wikipedia page too, which will give you a little more background.

What many of you were basically talking about is called the doctrine of inevitable disclosure, and it's a doctrine that comes up mainly in non-compete and trade secret cases.