Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

A featured story on Employment Law This Week is a Massachusetts court's ruling that former counsel is not barred from giving advice to a competitor.

An in-house lawyer for Gillette left the company 10 years ago. Four years later, he became General Counsel for Shavelogic, a Gillette competitor. Gillette recently tried to obtain a broad injunction against the lawyer, who they claimed would inevitably disclose trade secrets in his position. The Massachusetts Superior Court’s Business Litigation Session ruled that there was insufficient evidence that trade secrets would be ...

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="120"] Barry A. Guryan[/caption]

In a recent case decided by the Massachusetts Superior Court’s Business Litigation Session (which typically handles restrictive covenant cases), Gillette lost its attempt to obtain a broad injunction against a former in-house counsel who became the General Counsel at a competitor, Shavelogic.  In THE GILLETTE COMPANY v. CRAIG PROVOST, ET AL., Civil Action No. 15-0149 BLS 2 (Dec. 22, 2015), the Court found Gillette unlikely to succeed on its claims that  the General Counsel, who left Gillette ten years ...