Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

On July 29, 2014, a bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill that would create a federal private right of action for trade secret theft. The Trade Secrets Protection Act (H.R. 5233) is a House version of the Senate's Defend Trade Secrets Act (S. 2267), a bill introduced earlier this year.

As we discussed in a previous blog post, in the last couple of years, numerous legislators in Washington have made efforts to amend the Economic Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. §1831 et seq. (which currently allows only prosecutors to pursue trade secret thieves), to ...

Judge Ross of the United States District for the Eastern District of Missouri recently declined to issue a preliminary injunction in a trade secret misappropriation case, holding that a transportation company did not offer sufficient evidence to show that its customer lists and pricing information were trade secrets under Missouri law. Towne Air Freight, LLC v. Double M. Carriers, Inc., Case no. 4:14-CV-750-JAR (E.D. MO June 9, 2014).

In so ruling, Judge Ross quoted from an earlier case which held that “[c]ustomer lists are protectable as trade secrets only when they represent a ...

We just published a Practice Note with the Practical Law Company on how to minimize litigation risk when hiring from a competitor, and would like to share it with you.