According to Bloomberg, The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) is not expected to vote on the final version of a new rule that would ban noncompete clauses in employment contracts until April 2024. The rule defines a “non-compete clause” as “a contractual term between an employer and a worker that prevents the worker from seeking or accepting employment with a person, or operating a business, after the conclusion of the worker’s employment with the employer.”

As we previously reported, the proposed rule would ban employers from imposing noncompete agreements on their employees. The rule would also require employers to rescind all preexisting noncompete agreements and to notify all employees who had been subject to a noncompete agreement of the recission. Although the proposed rule would not prohibit other kinds of employment restrictions, such as nondisclosure agreements, certain restrictions that are overbroad could be subject to the new rule. For example, a non-disclosure agreement between an employer and an employee that is written so broadly that it effectively precludes the employee from working in the same field would be considered a “de facto” noncompete clause.

Continue Reading Final FTC Rule on Non-Competes Not Expected Before April 2024

Earlier this year, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that it was launching the Disruptive Technology Strike Force (“Strike Force”) in an effort “to target illicit actors, strengthen supply chains and protect critical technological assets from being acquired or used by nation-state adversaries.”  The DOJ’s initial announcement can be found here.  The Strike Force is co-led by the DOJ and Commerce Department with the goal of countering efforts by hostile nation-states seeking to illegally acquire sensitive United States technology.  On May 16, 2023, the DOJ announced criminal charges in five cases from five different U.S. Attorney’s Offices in connection with the Strike Force’s efforts.  Two of the cases involve allegations of trade secret theft from U.S. technology companies with the intent to market the technology in foreign countries. 

Continue Reading Justice Department Announces Trade Secret Theft and Other Charges Following Recently Launched Technology Strike Force

Now on Spilling Secrets, our podcast series on the future of non-compete and trade secrets law:

The inevitable disclosure doctrine, expected to be a widely used tool to protect trade secrets after the famous PepsiCo, Inc. v. Redmond case in 1995, has not been as commonly employed as anticipated. But is the legal landscape about to change?

Continue Reading Spilling Secrets Podcast: Inside the Most Famous Trade Secrets Case of All Time

Now on Spilling Secrets, our podcast series on the future of non-compete and trade secrets law:

The 2023 Academy Awards are over, but we’re keeping the awards season alive with our very own Trade Secrets Fail Awards, highlighting Hollywood’s biggest missteps in depicting trade secret issues on-screen.

Panelists Peter A. SteinmeyerKatherine G. RigbyA. Millie Warner, and Daniel R. Levy discuss their picks for the worst trade secret theft and misappropriation in the movies and on television.

Continue Reading Spilling Secrets Podcast: Trade Secrets on Film and TV

Epstein Becker Green is proud to sponsor the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (AIPLA) 2022 Trade Secret Summit in Miami, FL on December 8-9, 2022. The AIPLA Trade Secret Summit is the leading trade secret conference in the nation, with speakers from across the spectrum of private practitioners, in-house counsel, government, and academia, as well as fantastic networking opportunities.

Erik Weibust, Member of the Firm, is the outgoing-Chair of the AIPLA Trade Secret Committee and will speak on a panel entitled “Protecting AI-generated Inventions as Trade Secrets.” Eddie Loya, Member of the Firm, will be speaking on a
Continue Reading Save the Date – 2022 AIPLA Trade Secret Summit

It’s no secret that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has been struggling financially for well over a decade. One means of combatting its struggles has been to contract with third-party resellers to market USPS services and drive customers to it. Indeed, just one of those resellers, Express One, delivered over $3 billion in revenue to the USPS in the past 12 months alone. Although the annual operating budget of the USPS is $77 billion, $3 billion is still real money—especially since the USPS suffered losses of $6.9 billion last year.

Continue Reading Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night . . . Will Stop the U.S. Postal Service from Stealing Its Contractor’s Trade Secrets?

“The law is not a game, and . . . civil discovery is not a game of hide and seek. The decision in this case should encourage litigants to understand that it is risky business to recklessly or deliberately fail to produce documents, and perilous to disobey court orders to review and, if necessary, supplement prior productions. It is in the interests of the administration of justice to default [defendants] to send those messages.”

So said United States District Judge Mark L. Wolf in a 72-page decision in which he entered a default judgment as a sanction in a trade secret case against the defendants for what he referred to as “extreme misconduct.” Memorandum and Order on Plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions, Red Wolf Energy Trading, LLC v. BIA Capital Mgmt., LLC, et al., C.A. No. 19-10119-MLW (D. Mass. Sept. 8, 2022).

Continue Reading Pennywise and Pound Foolish: Default Judgment Entered Against Trade Secret Defendants as a Sanction for Inadequate E-Discovery

Thomson Reuters Practical Law has released the 2022 update to “Trade Secret Laws: Illinois,” a Q&A guide to state law on trade secrets and confidentiality for private employers, authored by our colleagues Peter Steinmeyer and David Clark at Epstein Becker Green.

Continue Reading Illinois Trade Secret Laws: 2022 Q&A Guide for Employers

Despite the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 ruling in West Virginia v. EPA that regulatory agencies must have “clear congressional authorization” to make rules pertaining to “major questions” that are of “great political significance” and would affect “a significant portion of the American economy,” and the import of that ruling to the area of noncompete regulation (which we addressed in detail in Law360), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced yesterday that they are teaming up to address certain issues affecting the labor market, including the regulation of noncompetes.

In a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) issued on July 19, 2022, the FTC and NRLB shared their shared view that:

Continue Reading The FTC Seemingly Thumbs Its Nose at the Supreme Court

Exchange Act Rule 21F-17, adopted in 2011 under the auspices of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, prohibits any person from taking any action to impede an individual from communicating directly with the SEC, including by “enforcing, or threatening to enforce, a confidentiality agreement . . . .”  The SEC has prioritized enforcing this rule expansively, by requiring employers to provide SEC-specific carveouts to policies and agreements governing confidentiality.  According to an Order issued last week against The Brink’s Company ( “Brink’s” or “Brinks”), the SEC seems to suggest that employers must provide a specific carveout in restrictive covenant agreements permitting employees and former employees to report information to the SEC in addition to the statutory disclosure provided for in the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA).

Continue Reading DTSA Whistleblower Language May Be Required, but Is It Sufficient? Not According to the SEC.