Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

In managing workforces, particularly when addressing employee turnover, employers often find themselves facing issues regarding how best to safeguard their confidential business information and how to protect their relationships with clients and employees. In recent years, the legal landscape underlying these issues has been evolving, as lawmakers and judges grapple with the tension in these matters between protection and free competition.

In this Take 5, we examine recent developments, both in the courts and legislative bodies, concerning trade secrets and employee ...

Featured on Employment Law This Week:  No relief is expected from the Trump administration on anti-poaching agreements.

2016 guidance from the DOJ and FTC put employers on notice that agreements between companies not to poach employees, or to limit the compensation paid to some employees, could violate antitrust laws. There had been some speculation that President Trump’s DOJ would back away from this policy, but recent comments by the Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division indicated that new administration will support the policy, and promised several ...

On October 20, 2016—just about three weeks before the presidential election won by Donald Trump—the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission issued a remarkable document, entitled “Antitrust Guidance for Human Resources Professionals,” which outlined an aggressive policy promising to investigate and punish employers, and even individual Human Resources employees, who enter into unlawful agreements concerning recruitment or retention of employees.  As stated in that document, “[a]n agreement among competing employers to limit or fix the terms of ...

Peter A. Steinmeyer and Lauri F. Rasnick, Members of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Chicago and New York offices, respectively, co-authored an article in Thomson Reuters Practical Law, titled “Garden Leave Provisions in Employment Agreements.”

Following is an excerpt (see below to download the full article in PDF format):

In recent years, traditional non-compete agreements have come under increasing judicial scrutiny, with courts focusing on issues such as the adequacy of consideration, the propriety of ...