Biglaw

Biglaw Partners Accused Of Blowing Off Intellectual Property Laws

The complaint says the attorneys removed plaintiffs copyright notices and pasted on their own before using it in a client presentation.

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A new lawsuit filed last week accuses two attorneys at Littler of knowingly infringing upon the intellectual property of others. The Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC), a members-only organization, says in their complaint that Littler shareholder Lance Gibbons and principal Chris Gokturk improperly accessed CWC materials and used them as the base of their own client presentations.

As the filing notes, both Gibbons and Gokturk previously worked for CWC — as CWC’s assistant general counsel and senior adviser for compliance solutions, respectively — and were aware law firms are specifically barred from CWC membership (to allow members to have an open and frank conversation about workplace compliance issues and to prevent firms from accessing CWC’s proprietary information). Despite this, CWC alleges the Littler attorneys repeatedly accessed members-only materials:

“The scale and scope of this unlawful conduct from the Littler IP address was extraordinary. Over the course of approximately seventeen (17) months beginning at least in November 2018, Defendant Littler’s servers were used to unlawfully obtain CWC Members-Only Site materials approximately four hundred forty-two (442) times.”

As reported by Law.com, this allegedly didn’t stop the attorneys from getting access to CWC materials and then using them for their own purposes:

Nonetheless, Gibbons allegedly told a Littler client and CWC member that he needed access to the client’s CWC password to access one particular CWC memorandum. Instead, Gibbons gained access to a significant number of materials over months and requested the client’s updated password multiple times after it was changed, according to the suit.

Gibbons and Gokturk then allegedly used these materials to prepare their own presentations for clients, removing CWC copyright notices and substituting Littler’s own copyright notice.

Littler has made a statement about the allegations disavowing any knowledge of the allegations (additionally, based on a look of the firm’s website, it seems Gibbons is no longer at the firm):

“Littler values and respects intellectual property rights, and we expect our attorneys to do the same,” a firm spokeswoman said Monday. “The firm had no knowledge at the time of the alleged actions. As soon as we were made aware of the situation, we initiated an investigation and took immediate action based on our findings. As this is an ongoing litigation matter, we cannot provide any further comment.”

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But that may not be enough to get them out of legal ramifications however. The complaint is alleging the firm didn’t do enough to stop the breaches:

“Defendant Littler failed to implement appropriate controls and reasonable safeguards including best practices for employers to avoid the recurring and voluminous misappropriation of intellectual property of CWC by defendant Gibbons and defendant Gokturk, along with possibly other employees, over a substantial period of time,” the complaint said.

The complaint alleges two counts of copyright infringement, two counts of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, one count of fraud, and one count of alternation of copyright management information.

headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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