One of Altus IP's guiding principles is it is easier to stop a problem before it starts. This principle couldn't be more true than when protecting intellectual property. Properly training employees in your intellectual property procedures and ensuring their compliance therewith is the most important tool in combating the loss or violation of your intellectual property rights. To ensure proper training and compliance, Altus IP offers several intellectual property services for employees including conducting employee trainings for all employees and employee exit-interviews for high-risk employees.
This training session focuses on the employee's role and responsibilities in protecting trade secrets. We discuss how an employee can identify both technical and non-technical proprietary information and what steps the employee must take to protect this information. Additionally, we review the employees' legal and contractual responsibilities to their employer regarding ownership and protection of trade secrets including an employee's continuing obligations after employment ceases.
This training session teaches employees the basics in identifying potential intellectual property and the early measures the employee should take in protecting this information. The goal of this session is to make employees aware of the various types of intellectual property, the actions they must take to protect this property on behalf of their employer and the difference (positive and negative) their actions can make on the value of the projects on which they work.
Additionally, we offer targeted employee training covering specific needs or concerns you would like addressed with your employees. We are happy to create training specifically focused on the needs of your business in protecting its intellectual property.
In addition to employee training, we also offer our services in conducting employee exit interviews. While generally, a qualified human resources professional conducts an exit interview reminding the employee of the employer's intellectual property policies and the employee's responsibilities therein, there may be situations where an owner, manager or human resources professional of the business is concerned that a departing employee may not abide by these policies to the detriment of the business. In these cases, we are available to assist in conducting the exit interview. In the exit interview, our role becomes re-explaining the employer's intellectual property policies, emphasizing the employee's responsibility to the employer even after they depart, and conveying the seriousness in which the employer takes its intellectual property rights including the steps the employer will take to fully protect its rights. Situations in which our services in conducting exit-interviews may be needed include when an employee is suspected of stealing information, when an employee is leaving for a competitor, when an employee is leaving to start a new business or when an employee is terminated and threatens to or is suspected of attempting to harm the business.