It's that time of year again. With the elections behind us and the next legislative session coming soon, a new version of a proposed Uniform Trade Secrets Act has been filed in Massachusetts. (This v...
As you likely have seen (here for example), the Patrick Administration has spent a great deal of time putting together comprehensive proposed legislation designed to promote growth and opportunity in...
The BRR 50 State Noncompete Chart has been updated to reflect various changes in statutory or case law, as well as clarifications of existing laws. Click here to get the latest version. ...
In February 2013, the Obama Administration issued Administration Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets. Part of that plan included the Administration's solicitation of public comment...
I have at least had a chance to read the December 27, 2012 decision of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington in Amazon.com v. Powers, granting in part and denying in...
Once again, this installment of “Trade Secret | Noncompete Issues and Cases in the News” is my vacation readings update. There is again a lot here! Enjoy… Federal/Antitrust: In October 2009,...
It seems that, lately, each installment of Trade Secret | Noncompete Issues and Cases in the News could be called, “What I read over my vacation.” As was inevitably the case, given the time betwee...
There have been lots of legislative changes in the offing. One of them was New Jersey's adoption of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Well, it is now official. Governor Christie has signed it. That leave...
This year saw not one, but two cases involving allegations of trade secret misappropriation and breach of noncompete agreements by companies typically known for things other than their trade secrets....
There has been much uncertainty in Massachusetts about whether and under what circumstances a claim under G.L. c. 93A (for those not from Massachusetts, that's our unfair competition statute, which pr...
About two years ago, my partner Steve Riden and I wrote a blog post on my old blog (the Trade Secrets / Noncompete Blog) entitled, Back to the Basics... The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The post wa...
This post provides a summary of noncompete and trade secret issues and cases that have arisen in the past month or so, but that I have not already addressed in recent posts. In addition to my summary,...
Unlike patents, trademarks, and copyright, there is no federal trade secret statute. Instead, each of the 50 states has its own laws. And, although most of states have adopted some version of the Unif...
There are basically four types of intellectual property: patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Here is a very brief summary of each: A patent is the right “to exclude others fro...
The Joint Committee on Labor & Workforce Development has officially announced that it will be conducting a hearing on, among other things, the Massachusetts noncompete bill on September 15. The he...
The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey recently issued a decision (Syncsort Incorporated v. Innovative Routines, International, Inc.) providing one more piece in the puzzl...
While everyone else gets their information by googling it, how does Google get its information? Well, according to Pay Pal, it steals it. Just two days ago (Friday, May 27, 2011 - for those reading...
The BRR 50 State Noncompete Chart has been updated today (April 12, 2011) to reflect an update to South Carolina’s handling of overly broad restrictions. Specifically, the South Carolina Supreme Co...
Recognizing the need to crack down on misappropriation of trade secrets, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has stepped up its enforcement of the Economic Espionage Act, among other statutes. See the DO...
Today's headlines provided an interesting twist on the intersection between trade secret law and sunshine (or "freedom of information") laws. See UConn Fights to Keep Donor List Secret. Typically,...
As we all know, trade secret litigation has been steadily on the rise for the past decade. (See The Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why of Trade Secret Audits and, in the related area of noncompete...
For those of you interested in seeing a copy of the Massachusetts noncompete bill as it was filed, click here or on the image to the right. Remember that the goal of the Representatives sponsoring...
The bill in Massachusetts to codify, clarify, and modernize Massachusetts law relative to employee noncompetition agreements was re-filed today, with several significant changes from the prior version...
We spend lots of time on this blog discussing trade secret protection. To give some context, I thought it might be helpful to have a few statistics: Trade secret and related noncompete cases have m...