Tag Archives: trade secret litigation

Two new California laws will fundamentally alter the national noncompete landscape, effectively voiding other states’ laws and contracts, and adversely impacting companies’ ability to protect their trade secrets, confidential business information, customer goodwill, and other legitimate business interests. Join us and over 40 other lawyers for a roundtable brainstorming session.
Education comes at a price. But not this time. Beck Reed Riden is making available its Ten Minute Trade Secret Training Series videos freely available - and available for free. With the FTC rule banning noncompetes on the horizon and more states limiting the use of noncompetes, it is now more imperative than ever before that companies and employees take steps to protect their trade secrets, other confidential information, and customer relationships.
Over 50 percent of employees admit stealing company information when they leave for a new job. It’s this “insider threat” that keeps us up at night. To help combat it, we have updated and reissued our training, Protecting Trade Secrets While Working From Home, with improved audio and additional substance.
Episode 12 of Fairly Competing is out! In this episode, Ben Fink, John Marsh, and I explore Wisk Aero LLC v. Archer Aviation Inc., an extremely well-reasoned decision offering an object lesson about preliminary injunctions in trade secret cases, highlighting that it’s no longer safe to assume you will get a preliminary injunction simply because a former employee downloaded 5,000 documents — even if he invokes the 5th Amendment.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Van Buren is out. The Court took a narrow view on the scope of the CFAA, resolving key aspects of the circuit split, and eliminating the concern that every breach of fiduciary duties by an employee or violation by an employee of the terms of their employer’s computer use policy can be a criminal act.
About twice a year, I update my chart of reported noncompete and trade secrets decisions. As regular readers of this blog know, a little over a decade ago, I became curious to see how many reported trade secret and noncompete decisions were issued each year in all of the federal and state courts around the country. So, I did a “back of the envelope” calculation. I have performed similar calculations every year since. Here is the latest.
Protecting trade secrets, confidential business information, goodwill, and any other recognized legitimate business interests does not happen by accident. Companies need to plan. And, when one of the key tools is taken away (i.e., noncompetes), they need to look more closely at the remaining options to ensure they have the protections they need and that fit their circumstances. We discuss them in this post.