In the Daily Journal article “How Generative AI is Impacting Trade Secret Protection,” partners Daniel Hughes and Adam Powell explore the ways in which generative AI poses new challenges and opportunities related to trade secrets.
Given the rapid rise of generative AI usage, Hughes and Powell encourage companies to consider “whether information that is generated by an AI…[and] whether inputs sent to an AI” can be “protected as a trade secret.”
The authors explain that it could be possible to safeguard content generated by AI as a trade secret, particularly because trade secret law “does not include the same sort of author or inventorship requirements as patent or copyright law.” They also explain several potential obstacles to protecting AI-created content under trade secret law and what companies should do to protect their interests. They recommend that companies carefully consider the terms of service of the AI to determine whether input data will be used to train future models or potentially be shared with other users in output.
“[F]ew courts have addressed generative AIs in the trade secret context,” write Hughes and Powell. “The law is sure to develop over time, but companies that use generative AI tools should look to trade secrets as an avenue to protect valuable information that may not be protectable under other forms of intellectual property.”
Read the full article here.
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