Your employee markets your company through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. The employee develops – as he or she is asked to do – a substantial network. Later, your employee leaves. Wh...
About a year a a half ago, I was curious to see how many actual reported trade secret / noncompete decisions were issued each year. So, I did a "back of the envelope" calculation. The results are here...
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...
Earlier today (September 15), the Massachusetts legislature’s Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development took testimony on the pending bills to reform Massachusetts noncompete law: two to...
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...
The BRR 50 State Noncompete Chart has been updated today (June 26, 2011) to reflect an update to Colorado and Texas laws. Both changes reflect significant developments in the respective state's...
The central component of Texas noncompete law that separated it from the pack is that the consideration needed to support a noncompete had to be related to the legitimate business interest sought to b...
Mass trade secret statute creates significant ambiguity for employers.
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...
Pfizer reportedly sold $11.4 billion – yes, billion with a “b” – of cholesterol-lowing drug, Lipitor, last year and is reportedly on track to sell another $13 billion this year. See here....
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...
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...