Arora will pay an undisclosed amount to ABIM.
Dr. Rajender Arora, the firm’s principal, has surrendered his ABIM board certifications.
Arora is allowed to offer test-prep materials but won’t run live review courses.
A permanent injunction filed in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania forbids Arora from “creating, reproducing, copying, distributing, offering for sale, selling and/or publicly displaying” any materials that infringe on ABIM’s exam copyrights or “were derived in any way” from the exams. And it agrees not to collect, solicit or encourage third parties to collect or share the contents of the exams.
Should past examination questions be a trade secret? The ABIM apparently thinks so and with this action has done a nice job of protecting its proprietary interest.
1 comment:
Well that is one court's opinion. I wonder how good Dr. Arora's attorney was in arguing against the idea that old exam questions are "trade secrets". Here is the opinion of a law firm that specializes in this area:
One law firm which is specialized in FOLLOWING TRADE SECRETS AND TRADE SECRETS LITIGATION, PARTICULARLY IN THE SOUTHEAST U.S. did render an "off the cuff" opinion on whether exam questions constitute "trade secrets" under any common definition of the term; see:
http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.com/2010/01/medical-board-sues-test-preparation.html
Their commentary at the end: "We have some doubts whether test questions, obtained from test takers, constitute trade secrets under any commonly accepted definition of that term. But the allegation is an interesting one and we'll keep an eye on this one for you".
If ABIM has to go against these people in the next round, can they still win?????? We might just find out.
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