Intellectual property practice chair Eugene Mar provided expert commentary to American Banker for the article "JPMorgan Chase Accuses TransUnion of Stealing 'Trade Secrets'."

In the article, he said:

"By filing this as a trade secret case, Chase's lawsuit actually shines an interesting light on who owns credit card transaction data," Mar said. "I believe the complaint asserts that the banks like Chase own credit card transaction data, but does an average user actually know that? Probably not."

"The biggest impact I see from this case is that I expect all the companies in this ecosystem like banks, co-branded companies, data brokers, data aggregators, and data analytic companies to closely scrutinize their agreements to see what limits are placed on each other to use the credit card data," Mar said. "You could see more disputes among these players about one company improperly exceeding the scope of their agreements or misappropriating trade secrets in the form of compiled, synthesized, or aggregated credit card transaction data."

Read the full article here.