Arent Fox attorney Michael Cryan was quoted in a March 10, 2011, Law 360 article covering an oral argument before a California judge on a question of attorney-client privilege in suit between Wyde Voice LLC and real-time voice and video processing software maker Global IP Solutions Inc.. Mr. Cryan represents Wyde in its suit accusing GIPS of breaching a licensing deal before Google Inc. bought it for $68.2 million in 2010.

In the article titled “Wyde Voice, GIPS Spar Over Privilege In Contract Row,” Law360 reports:

Wyde Voice attorney Michael S. Cryan, of Arent Fox LLP, [argued] GIPS — which was acquired by Google in 2010 — was seeking to use Google's power to carve out a new standard of privilege under common law, “the Google privilege.”

“Merely CC'ing an attorney does not transform a business communication into a privileged one,” he said. “None of these parties have a written joint defense covering these communications. Privilege simply is not established on these facts.”

As to the trade secrets issue, Cryan noted that the parties had already agreed to a specific confidentiality order with two levels of protection.

Not only is GIPS allowed to mark documents as confidential, he said, it can specify documents as “for attorneys' eyes only,” meaning that they would be disclosed only to the attorneys involved in   the case, not the parties. “This is a substantial protection,” he said. “We are entitled to this information, and we need it in order to prove to the court that there is no burden of proof.”

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