intellectual property

IT professionals know that handing data over to a third-party is always risky, but cloud computing creates unique concerns for IP. Here are nine tips to protect critical corporate data wherever it goes

Do you think data breaches are up or down in 2011 compared to 2007 or 2008? The official answer may surprise you. According to DatalossDB and the 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report [PDF link] by Verizon, the number of records compromised per year has been decreasing since its 2008 peak. But these reports are missing something very important. It all comes down to what is reported. Last year I met with more than 450 CIOs and CSOs, and almost all of them said that incidents are way up. New breaches are constantly making headlines, so why is there a discrepancy between our perception and what these reports are finding?

How much knowledge does a platform provider need to have of the files being traded on their system before they can be considered culpable?

PhoneDog.com is suing a former employee who built a list of 17,000 followers on Twitter with his comments and reviews before moving on after four years. PhoneDog said the followers are a valuable customer list and the former employee owes it $340,000. Do you feel like an asset?

As IP lawsuits proliferate in the churn of the mobile market, end-user companies may get pulled in to suits and business arrangements they might not have agreed to otherwise.

In a seeming reversal, the holding consortium formed by Apple, EMC, Microsoft, and Oracle, known as CPTN Holdings, LLC, withdrew its application from the German Federal Cartel Office, leaving many hoping if this was a sign of the end of a patent deal that has sent shock waves through the open source community. This was not what happened.

Microsoft's role in snapping up the 882 Novell patents for $450 million makes no difference in how Microsoft regards open source and how open source regards Microsoft. Not one bit of difference at all.

Your data is your business. And if you're not vigilant about your employees' access to that data, you're going to end up out of business. That's the advice of Patricia Titus, current CISO of Unisys and former CISO of the Transportation Security Administration.

Ignorance and seemingly innocent activities can subject you to fines, lawsuits, and even jail. Here's how to play it safe.

On Tuesday, a jury in Nevada sided with Novell in its long-running legal dispute with SCO.

Critics have long said the US needs to do something to put a crimp in intellectual property crime -- an over $200 billion counterfeit and pirated goods industry.

Nokia has sued Apple in federal court, charging that the iPhone infringes on 10 patents owned by the Finnish mobile-phone maker.