For those interested in the status of and plans for the Massachusetts noncompete bill or Massachusetts noncompete law more generally, there are two up-coming discussions you may wish to attend. The...
This week’s disclosures by Wikileaks of hundreds of thousands of classified, secret documents is a stark reminder of the admonitions that we trade secrets lawyers have been saying for years: It is...
A lot has been written on how insecure social media can be and the need to assess the risks. I won't bother to add more. I am, however, passing along a very-well written (and lengthy) discussion of...
Earlier this month, I tried something a bit different. Doing a take-off on what I do in the last class of the Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants course that I teach at Boston University School o...
Well, there continues to be a lot of discussion about Georgia's new noncompete law. The most recent discussion at this point is not about the substance, however. Rather, it's about whether the law is...
While there are many tales of trade secrets, the two most heralded are: (1) the heroic measures taken to protect the secret formula to Coke and (2) the claim that the origins of trade secret law date...
International trade secret theft has become an increasing problem. As a primer for our readers, we have created an "International Trade Secrets" links section, which we are in the process of popul...
The 50 state survey of noncompete laws has been updated, primarily to reflect the change in Georgia law. It is available for download here. Please note that the chart will be periodically updated...
Well, the waiting is over. Georgia voters voted to change their constitution to permit noncompetes to be more enforceable. Georgia had been long known as one of the harder states in which to enforc...
I am trying something a bit different. It's a take-off on what I do in my last class in the Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants course I teach at Boston University School of Law. So, here it goes....
There is a latin maxim, "Gladiator in arena consilium capit." Translation: “The gladiator is formulating his plan in the arena." (I thank my boys, the latin scholars, for introducing me to the maxim...
When an employee is bound by a noncompetition agreement, it is rare for the noncompete to be the exclusive restriction on the employee's post-employment conduct. Rather, noncompetition agreements are...
Many years ago (1997, I think), I wrote an article about email privacy in the workplace. Given the recent debate following City of Ontario v. Quon (see my prior post, So, Can Your Employees Sext At Wo...
The perennial issue of the extent of privacy rights in the workplace -- in particular, what right the employer has to review private messages (including sexually-explict text messages, see "sexting")...
The utility of a 50 state survey on noncompetes has come up at various points. So, I finally took it upon myself to create one and make it publicly available. The chart is a summary of employee noncom...
In October 2009, Computerworld published an article of mine entitled, "No-poach agreements: A new generation of restriction." The article discussed a no-poach agreement used by several large high tech...
Rule 5.6 of the Rules of Professional Conduct (the rule prohibiting lawyers from being bound by noncompetes) and its analogue in the Canons of Ethics (DR 2-108(A)) have a noble purpose: the protecti...
Well, I guess it's not such a bad thing that my last post was about the HP/Oracle/Hurd dispute, as there's more to report. It's settled. No surprise there; most of these cases do settle - and settl...
Bad pun aside, Hewlett-Packard has sued its former CEO, Mark Hurd, who left HP last month and reportedly just joined Oracle as its new co-president. (A copy of the complaint if available here.) No...
There is an endless variety of types of trade secrets and confidential information. (On the question of the significance of the distinction, see Trade Secret or Confidential Information?, posted on J...
When drafting restrictive covenants, including especially noncompetes and nonsolicitation agreements, companies should consider including a liquidated damages provision. Before the guffaws start, note...
Personal data is shared in myriad ways, some obvious, others not so much. If you're an avid photographer, you probably know about geotags. But, if you're a casual photographer, you might not. And,...
You may recall that in February, a senior executive from Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc. ("Bimbo") - maker of, among other things, Thomas' English Muffins - went to work for a competitor. The executive, Chri...
Although the Massachusetts noncompete bill had made substantial progress since its introduction, many more pressing issues in need of urgent legislative attention took priority, leaving the bill stal...