Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

On March 16, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed defendant Shan Shi’s conviction for conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets. Given recent efforts at the state and now federal level to ban non-competes, employers may be more likely to consider partnering with law enforcement to remedy trade secret theft.

The Court’s opinion begins with the statement, “We can’t always get what we want, but, sometimes, we get what we need.” Unfortunately, the Court’s opinion continues, what Shi’s company needed were seven documents containing a ...

In Payward, Inc. v. Runyon, Case No. 20-cv-02130-MMC, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, ruling that information alleged to be “secret” failed to qualify as a “trade secret” under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.  The Court applied California and federal precedent explaining trade secret information confers a competitive business advantage, and found the complaint lacked any such allegations.  The decision make sense given the particular allegations in the case.  But does a “competitive business ...

A federal judge in Chicago recently taught a painful lesson to an Illinois employer: even if information is sufficiently sensitive and valuable that it could qualify as a “trade secret,” it won’t unless the owner of the information took adequate steps to protect its secrecy.

In a thorough opinion issued in the case, Abrasic 90 Inc., d/b/a CGW Camel Grinding Wheels, USA v. Weldcote Metals, Inc., Joseph O’Mera and Colleen Cervencik, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp, Jr. of the Northern District of Illinois explained that “there are two basic elements to the analysis” of ...

Effective as of October 1, 2018, Massachusetts will become the 49^th state to adopt a version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (leaving New York as the only holdout). Massachusetts did so as part of a large budget bill recently signed into law, which also resulted in the adoption of the Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act. (The text of the Massachusetts version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act is set out on pages 47-52 of the bill, H. 4868, while the effective date is set out on page 117. Here is a link to the entire budget bill.)

While there are differences from existing Massachusetts ...

Consider the following scenario: your organization holds an annual meeting with all Research & Development employees for the purpose of having an open discussion between thought leaders and R&D regarding product-development capabilities. This year’s meeting is scheduled outside the United States and next year’s will be within the U.S. with all non-U.S. R&D employees traveling into the U.S. to attend. For each meeting, your employees may be subject to a search of their electronic devices, including any laptop that may contain your company’s trade secrets. Pursuant to a new ...

In First Western Capital Management Co. v. Malamed, Case Nos. 16-1434, 16-1465 & 16-1502 (10th Cir. Oct. 30, 2017), the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a district court erred in issuing a preliminary injunction to a party under federal and state trade secret law where the court presumed that the party would be irreparably harmed absent the injunction.

Ordinarily, in order to obtain a preliminary injunction, a moving party needs to establish, among other things, that it will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is denied. This requires the party to show that there is a ...

It is rare that a trade secret / restrictive covenant lawsuit makes it all the way to trial, much less a jury verdict. The passage of time, accumulating legal expenses, bad facts, and/or the risk of losing at trial all can conspire to sap litigants of the desire to take their cases to the finish line.  Settlements and withdrawals of claims abound.  Sometimes, however, the parties dig in and roll the dice in court, as recently occurred in a case in the Southern District of New York.

On November 29, 2016, after more than 10 days of trial, a jury delivered a verdict in favor of the plaintiff Tesla ...