Stites & Harbison, PLLC

When one seeks to protect one’s intellectual property, patents, trademarks and copyrights immediately come to mind. Often given short shrift is the "forgotten stepchild" —trade secrets. Trade secrets may encompass a wide range of business information that (a) has value because it is not generally known in the trade and (b) is subject to reasonable efforts to preserve its confidentiality. When considering trade secrets, “business information” should be given a very broad definition and may include, but is not necessarily limited to, processes, procedures, research projects, nonpublic company documents (relating to, for example, recruiting, accounting, financial information and legal information), drawings, blueprints, laboratory notebooks, test data, training manuals, customer information and supplier information.

Next month, the Ohio High School Athletic Association (“OHSAA”) member schools will vote on whether to allow high school athletes to be paid for the name, image, and likeness (“NIL”). If approved, Ohio will join Alaska, California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Utah, which already allow high school athletes to profit from their NIL. Other states, like Tennessee and Mississippi, recently amended their NIL statutes in a manner that will likely allow for NIL in high school sports.

In December 2020, Congress signed into law the No Surprises Act (NSA) addressing surprise medical billing. Specifically, the NSA prohibits out-of-network health care providers and facilities from balance billing certain commercially insured patients in certain circumstances.

The federal No Surprises Act (the “NSA”) requires all healthcare service providers to provide accurate and reliable cost estimates (Good Faith Estimates) to patients paying cash for services. The NSA’s Good Faith Estimate requirement has not received the media or industry press enjoyed by the balance billing prohibitions applicable to out-of-network (“OON”) emergency services providers, OON ancillary service providers at in-network facilities, and OON air ambulance providers, but may actually be the biggest surprise in the NSA.