The "inevitable disclosure" doctrine permits the plaintiff in a trade secrets case to establish threatened misappropriation by showing that the defendant's new employment will inevitably lead the defendant to rely on the...more
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit took on the misappropriation of trade secrets recently, reversing a district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction halting competition by a company’s rival and two...more
Late last year, a California appellate court reaffirmed longstanding principles that have important lessons for employers hoping to prevent their employees from taking trade secrets with them if they leave to work for a...more
Grounded in California’s recognized hostility against restraints on competition, a recently published opinion from the California Court of Appeal, Hooked Media Grp., Inc. v. Apple Inc., held that to establish trade secret...more
An Illinois appellate court recently clarified the outer limits of the controversial “inevitable disclosure doctrine” under the Illinois Trade Secrets Act....more
Prior to the federally enacted Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), companies seeking civil remedies for misappropriation were generally limited to state law causes of action (including, where applicable, a state version of the...more
We first wrote on this topic nearly a year ago. Since then, courts have had an opportunity to interpret some of the provisions of the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). Indeed, since it was signed into law, more than...more
A recent decision in the Northern District of Illinois gave life to the inevitable disclosure doctrine under the Defend Trade Secrets Act. Inevitable disclosure is a common law doctrine by which a court can prevent a former...more
Companies commonly assume that they will only be sued for trade secret misappropriation if they or someone from their company steal the “secret sauce” of their competitor. Not true. A far more common way that companies get...more
A recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois allowed one company to sue its direct competitor for misappropriation of trade secrets based entirely on the improper taking of trade secrets...more
In a prior blog post, we used the Star Wars Universe as the backdrop for a discussion about obtaining a preliminary injunction in the context of a noncompete agreement. But we left a discussion of the inevitable disclosure...more
Though an employer may be eager to bring a trade secret claim against former employees as soon as possible, filing suit before properly vetting the claim can lead to serious consequences: a malicious prosecution case against...more
I said yesterday that there was too much in DSM Dyneema, LLC v. Thagard, 2015 NCBC 47 for just one post, so here are the rest of the key points from the case. They involve two claims you might not want to bother to make in...more
Twenty years ago, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond, 54 F.3d 1262 (7th Cir. 1995) advanced the “inevitable disclosure” doctrine in trade secret misappropriation cases. The doctrine essentially...more