Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

On April 27, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction preventing a real estate agent from working for a competitor, because her non-compete, attached to a grant of restrictive stock units, was likely enforceable despite the agent’s forfeiture of the company stock.

The employee in this case worked for Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty (“Martha Turner”) in Houston, Texas for over four years. Approximately nine months before her resignation, Martha Turner’s parent company ...

Citing Nebraska’s fundamental public policy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently affirmed a District Court’s refusal to enforce a Delaware choice of law clause in a non-compete agreement signed by a Nebraska employee.

Delaware law is generally favorable to enforcing non-compete restrictions.  Hundreds of thousands of new corporate entities (corporations, LLCs, LPs, LLCs, etc.) are created in Delaware every year, and the First State is home to more than two-thirds of the Fortune 500 and 80 percent of all firms that go public.[1] Many of these Delaware ...

Joining many other states that in recent years have enacted laws regarding physician non-competition agreements, Indiana recently enacted a statute that will place restrictions on such agreements which are originally entered into on or after July 1, 2020.

Under Pub. L. No. 93-2020 (to be codified in part as Ind. Code § 25-22.5-5.5) (2020), which will take effect on July 1, 2020, for a non-compete to be enforceable against a physician licensed in Indiana, the agreement must contain the following provisions:

1. A provision that requires the employer of the physician to provide the ...

A recent decision issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, presents a stark example of what can result when a defendant accused of trade secret misappropriation is careless in preserving electronically stored information (“ESI”) relevant to the lawsuit.

Silicon Valley-based autonomous car startup WeRide Corp. and WeRide Inc. (collectively, “WeRide”) sued rival self-driving car company AllRide.AI Inc. (“AllRide”), along with two of its former executives and AllRide’s related companies, asserting claims ...

When Massachusetts enacted the Massachusetts Noncompetition Agreement Act (“MNCA”) in mid-2018, some commentators suggested that the statute reflected an anti-employer tilt in public policy. But, we advised  that sophisticated employers advised by knowledgeable counsel could navigate the restrictions set forth in the MNCA.  As reported here, the May 2019 decision from the District of Massachusetts in Nuvasive Inc. v. Day and Richard, 19-cv-10800 (D. Mass. May 29, 2019) (Nuvasive I) supported our initial reading of the MNCA.   The First Circuit’s April 8, 2020 decision in ...

For any attorney about to rush into New York State court to seek an injunction or temporary relief with regard to a violation of a non-compete or other restrictive covenant, or with regard to misappropriation of trade secrets, think again about venue.

By Administrative Order, dated March 22, 2020, Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks has decreed that until further notice, New York State courts are accepting no filings unless the filings concern an emergency matter (as defined in the Order’s Exhibit A).  Neither restrictive covenant nor trade secret matters count as ...

On January 9, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) held a public workshop in Washington, DC to examine whether there is a sufficient legal basis and empirical economic support to promulgate a Commission rule that would restrict the use of non-compete clauses in employment contracts.  At the conclusion of the workshop, the FTC solicited public comments from interested parties on various issues, including business justifications for non-competes, effect of non-competes on labor-market participants and efficacy of state law for addressing harms arising from ...

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The Illinois legislature is once again setting its sights on covenants not to compete.  In 2016, Illinois enacted the “Illinois Freedom to Work Act,” prohibiting employers from entering into covenants not to compete with “low wage” employees.  In February 2020, Illinois legislators filed four bills targeting covenants not to compete for all Illinois employees.

SB 3021 and HB 4699 are identical in substance, and the most drastic.  These bills seek to prohibit all covenants not to compete in Illinois:  “… no employer shall enter into a covenant not to compete with any ...

A New London Connecticut Superior Court jury awarded an $839,423 verdict in November 2019, involving theft of trade secrets for a $70 million U.S. Navy underwater drone project. This case, LBI, Inc. v. Sparks, et al., KNL-cv12-6018984-S, is a classic example of the blatant theft of an employer’s confidential and proprietary information that is so easily traceable to electronic files – and the costly consequences for the defendant employer’s complicity in that trade secret misappropriation.

Plaintiff LBI, Inc., a small Groton-based research and design development ...