Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA)

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On Wednesday, December 21, I will be giving a one-hour Webinar/CLE for the Ohio State Bar Association (OSBA) entitled “Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Law Year in Review.” 

As readers of this blog know, the number of trade secret and restrictive cases continues to grow each year. At the same time, federal and state legislators, …

While there was minimal legislative actively last month, there were a number of interesting decisions and articles on the trade secret and restrictive covenant front:

Noteworthy Defend Trade Secrets Act Cases, Federal Trade Secrets Opinions and Related Commentary:

  • Perhaps the biggest news last month was the $104.65 million verdict against Ford Motor Co. delivered by a Michigan federal jury for the breach of its contract with Versata Software and the misappropriation of Versata’s trade secrets.   The dispute arose over a 2004 agreement between Versata and Ford for software that Versata developed to manage how components in Ford vehicles would be configured during assembly.  Versata had been a vendor of Ford’s since the 1990’s until 2015 when Ford terminated the relationship.  The jury found that after off-ramping Versata, Ford improperly reverse engineered the software for its own use.  The jury awarded $22.39 million to Versata for three of the software trade secrets and $82.26 million for Ford’s breach of contract.  Ford plans to appeal.  Like the Goodyear case that I recently wrote about, this dispute highlights the fact that trade secret cases don’t just involve departing employees.
  • Speaking of cases involving employees, Patently O‘s Dennis Crouch did an informal survey of 10 recently filed federal trade secret cases.  Dennis noted that all 10 of the cases involved employer/employee disputes and many arose in the sales representative context over customer and sales information.  One of the cases, Cartiga, LLC v. Robles, provides a textbook example of how NOT to respond to a cease-and-desist letter from your former employer’s lawyer (the emojis below were attached as an exhibit to the complaint):
  • Having prevailed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Boeing successfully secured the dismissal of trade secrets claims asserted against it by arguing that a limitation of liability provision in its nondisclosure agreement (NDA) also applied to the same trade secret claims.  Reasoning that because the NDA’s choice of law provision applied to those trade secret claims, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama held that the NDA’s limitation of liability provision applied to those claims as well.  That opinion, Alabama Aircraft Indus., Inc. v. The Boeing Company, can be found here.
  • The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued yet another opinion taking a narrow approach to a trade secrets claim, affirming the trial court’s decision to deny an injunction against a group of employees.  In Matthews Int’l Corp. v. Lombardi, the Third Circuit found that the trial court properly exercised its discretion to limit injunctive relief to a single bad actor and not impose a broader injunction against the remaining individual defendants preventing them from otherwise lawfully competing.  The other individuals had already agreed, as memorialized by a subsequent order, to (1) return all of the plaintiff’s information, (2) remove the information from their devices, and (3) refrain from servicing customers who had the plaintiff’s cremation equipment.  The Third Circuit reasoned that no injunction was necessary for multiple reasons, including the absence or expiration of any restrictive covenants, the absence of any breach and the plaintiff’s inability to show irreparable injury.  Isaiah Weedn has a good summary of the case in Sheppard Mullin’s Trade Secrets Law Blog.
  • Federal courts continue to grapple with the importance of circumstantial evidence to demonstrate misappropriation at the summary judgment stage.  Last month, I wrote about a decision out of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois holding mere possession of a trade secret was insufficient to show use.  However, in Clean Energy v. Trillium Transportation Fuels, Inc., Magistrate Peter Bray of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas held that “proof of ‘use’ often depends upon circumstantial evidence” and found that the circumstantial evidence presented to him was sufficient to deny the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.  The cases probably can be reconciled by the fact that there was more circumstantial evidence to offer in the Clean Energy case, but the decisions do highlight a schism on the significance of direct vs. circumstantial evidence.
  • Federal courts are also split on the availability of the inevitable disclosure doctrine under the DTSA, according to Mintz’s Oliver Ennis, Nicholas Armington and Adam Samansky in an article for The National Law Journal.
  • One of the signature developments of the DTSA has been the mind-numbing number of opinions addressing motions to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).  Fisher & Phillips’ David Walton provides a five-step action plan for making sure your bases are covered if you are filing a claim under the DTSA.  Maxwell Goss also has an earlier post this year on the same topic that was published by The Michigan Law Journal.
  • Is there a circuit split on the enforceability of forum selection clauses?  Given the many differences between state laws on restrictive covenants, a forum selection clause can be outcome determinative.  Sarah Tisher of Beck Reed Riden has a post about that split and the prospects that the U.S. Supreme Court may address it.
  • The avoided cost theory of damages continues to gain traction as an element of damages in trade secret cases, advises Andrea Feathers for Sheppard Mullins Trade Secrets Law Blog.  In essence, the doctrine recognizes the cost savings that a misappropriator realizes when it is able to shortcut the research or development of a product or service by using that trade secret.  Heather writes about a recent decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in Medimpact Healthcare Sys. v. IQVIA Inc., No. 19cv1865-GPC(DEB), 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186470, at *1 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 7, 2022), that recognized the availability of the doctrine but deferred ruling on how best to calculate those damages in further briefing.  Heather’s post provides a solid summary of the development of this theory of damages and the key decisions that have led to its increasing recognition and use by trade secret owners.

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Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (November 11, 2022): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Cases, Developments and Posts

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And away we go:

Noteworthy Defend Trade Secrets Act Cases, Federal Trade Secrets Opinions and Related Commentary:

  • If an employer presents specific evidence that former employees emailed, printed out or took copies of customer lists, is that sufficient evidence to establish that those former employees misappropriated those trade secrets for purposes of defeating summary judgment?  In Busey Bank v. Michael G. Turnery, et al., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Judge Sara Ellis concluded that it was not enough since “mere possession of trade secrets does not suffice to plausibly allege disclosure or use of those trade secrets, even when considered in conjunction with solicitations of former clients.”  A link to the opinion can be found here, and Law360′s article on the case can be found here.  The opinion is interesting to me in two respects:  (1) it is consistent with an emerging trend requiring direct, rather than circumstantial, proof of misappropriation (see my earlier post on the Wisk Aero v. Archer Aviation case and on other federal cases finding that mere downloading isn’t enough for an injunction); and (2) reading between the lines, it seemed like Judge Ellis saw this case as an employee “raiding case” masquerading as a trade secrets case.
  • Although most trade secret disputes arise in the employer/employee relationship, a recent opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit serves as a reminder that the contours of trade secret law are often shaped by disputes in the public records context.  In a post for Crowell’s Government Contracts Legal Forum, John McCarthy, Anuj Vohra and Daniel Wolff describe the decision that better defined what degree of competitive harm needs to be presented to support a trade secret invocation under the 2016 FOIA Improvement Act.
  • Discovery disputes are common in trade secret litigation because of the nature of information at issue (i.e., highly sensitive trade secrets) and the potential intrusiveness of some of the types of discovery (imaging and forensic analysis of personal devices).  However, a defendant’s continued resistance and non-compliance with discovery requests and court orders led to the rarest of sanctions–a default on the merits.  In RedWolf Energy Trading, LLC v. BIA Capital Management, LLC, et al., the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts imposed this sanction against the individual defendant and his company.  Erik Weibust details the court’s 72-page decision for Epstein Becker’s Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility Blog.  Erik’s post highlights the fact that the defendant tried to save costs on a discovery vendor (blaming him for its failure) and is now on the hook for more than $10 million in damages.
  • And the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts is not the only court that has issued terminating sanctions against a party for failing to abide by discovery obligations and court orders.  For a comprehensive list of spoliation cases involving requests for severe sanctions, check out Arent Fox’s Linda Jackson, Matthew Prewitt, Taniel Anderson, Nadia Patel and Pascal Naples’ article for The National Law Journal describing multiple cases over the past 3 years in which courts have imposed severe sanctions on recalcitrant parties.
  • Speaking of discovery disputes, there is an interesting decision coming out of the Wisk Aero v. Archer Aviation case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (for more on that case and its well-reasoned decision denying a preliminary injunction, see my post from last year).  U.S. District Court Judge Orrick affirmed the ruling of Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu that permitted the individual defendants accused of trade secret theft in that case to review the trade secrets at issue; frankly, given the need for a defendant to evaluate the trade secret claims against it, it never fails to amaze me that employers and trade secret owners resist these types of disclosures.  However, the most interesting feature of the Magistrate’s order is that each defendant was only allowed to view the trade secret for 15 minutes.  Jim Pooley briefly touches on this dispute in a post he wrote for The IP Watchdog as he describes the many situations where courts have to balance competing policies and interests in trade secret litigation.
  • Steve Brachman has a post for the IP Watchdog on the viability of an argument that the DTSA’s policy supporting federal protection for trade secrets trumps a forum selection clause directing litigation to Denmark.  In Amyndas Pharmaceuticals, S.A. v. New Zealand Pharma AS, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected that and other arguments and shipped the case out to a Danish court.  The First Circuit made short work of the argument that the terms “defendants’ venue” meant anything other than the corporate headquarters of that defendant, reasoning any other interpretation would render the phrase meaningless.  Dennis Crouch also has a post on the decision for the Patently-O blog.

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Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (October 5, 2022): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Cases, Developments and Posts

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It was a busy August, so here are the highlights:

Noteworthy Defend Trade Secrets Act Cases, Federal Trade Secrets Opinions and Related Commentary:

  • Can a trade secret owner plead a claim of inevitable disclosure under the DTSA?  In Idexx Laboratories, Inc. v. Graham Bilbrough, Magistrate Nivoson of the U.S. District Court of Maine dismissed that claim, reasoning the majority of courts have rejected that theory based on the language and history of the DTSA.  Readers of this blog will remember that language was added to the DTSA near the end of legislative negotiations to placate concerns of California Senator Dianne Feinstein about the use of this doctrine, which is prohibited in California.  However, it is worth noting that multiple courts, including federal courts in Illinois and Pennsylvania, have allowed the doctrine to be pleaded under a pendent state law claim if that state recognizes the inevitable disclosure doctrine.  For a good primer on past decisions regarding the inevitable disclosure doctrine and the DTSA, check out this post from Orrick’s Trade Secrets Watch.
  • In a high profile case brought by NBA star Zion Williamson against his former agent, Williamson v. Prime Sports Marketing LLC et al., the U.S. District Court of North Carolina has ruled in his favor, holding that the concept of marketing Zion as the next Lebron James did not qualify as a trade secret.  Astor Heaven and Emily Tucker summarize the decision in Crowell’s Trade Secrets Trends Blog.
  • Avoided costs can qualify as damages for a trade secret claim says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.  Eileen McDermott has a summary of the Third Circuit’s ruling in a post for the IP Watchdog.
  • Does a trade secret complaint’s allegations of misappropriation present facial plausibility or are they merely consistent with liability? Yes, that is lawyerspeak at its finest, but it’s an important question because it may determine whether your trade secret complaint will survive a motion to dismiss. As Federal Rule 12(b)(6) has become a more prominent tool for defendants in trade secret cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit provides a roadmap for plaintiffs and defendants alike for framing their arguments in connection pleading/attacking a trade secret or restrictive covenant claim.  In LS3 Inc. v. Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs, LLC, the Tenth Circuit applied this test to a dispute over the poaching of employees, holding that the breach of fiduciary duty and misappropriate of trade secret claims survived Rule 12(b)(6)’s standards but that the breach of contract claims were insufficient as a matter of law.
  • In the latest installment of lawyers behaving badly, Littler and Polsinelli continue to square off about whether a client development toolkit assembled at Littler qualifies as a trade secret and whether it was misappropriated when a lawyer and staff left to start a competing practice at Polsinelli.  The parties are sparring over the scope of discovery and Littler has now withdrawn its request for a TRO.  A summary of the arguments and related developments as reported by Law360 can be found here.
  • The Motorola v. Hytera case, the high-profile case I have written about pending in Chicago, has some interesting developments.  First, readers of this blog will know that Motorola prevailed in the case and is supposed to be receiving a sizable court-ordered royalty payment from Hytera; however, Hytera claims it can’t pay, so Motorola has filed a motion for contempt and is asking the district court to enter the injunction it previously denied (see this article summarizing the motion practice in Radio Research Mission Critical Communications).  Second, Hytera has been granted leave to assert antitrust counterclaims against Motorola.  These claims are rare in the trade secret context, so it will be interesting to see how they unfold.  Stay tuned.
  • I wrote about the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in Rexxa, Inc. v. Chester last month and there are two posts with different takes on the opinion worth reading.  Sheppard Mullins’ Mikela Sutrina and Jenna Crawford emphasize that the 11-year wait by the plaintiff Rexxa undermined its trade secret claim because certain aspects of the alleged trade secret had become widely known by the time of the lawsuit.  And Holland & Knight has a thorough client alert analyzing both the district court’s initial opinion and the Seventh Circuit affirming opinion; that post focuses on Rexxa’s failure to adequately identify the trade secrets as the key to the opinion dismissing the case.
  • There are multiple decisions addressing attorneys’ fees sought by successful litigants this past month.  U.S. District Court Judge Gray Miller ordered IBM to pay $21 million in attorneys’ fees after the $1.6 billion dollar verdict against it.  And Law360 is reporting on a $3.9  million award to Munck Wilson for its fees in a trade secrets case pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas; the decision enforced a contractual indemnity as the basis for those fees.  Finally, Marcus Mintz and Robyn Marsh note that an unsuccessful plaintiff dodged a bad faith finding in a post for Seyfarth’s Trading Secrets Blog.  In Transperfect Global, Inc. v. Lionbridge Technologies, Inc., U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York, denied that request, although she chastised the plaintiff for pursuing that claim after it should known they were without merit, characterizing its litigation conduct as “unsavory business.”

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Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (September 7, 2022): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Cases, Developments and Posts

“It’s all in your head but I own it anyway.” It’s a tough argument to make, let alone swallow, and, fortunately, it has been recently rejected by two federal courts in cases that follow an increasingly common fact pattern:  an employee abides by their restrictive covenant but goes on to compete against their former employer after the covenant expires.  Fearing the competition, the employer pursues a trade secrets claim, arguing that the employee will inevitably disclose its trade secrets or that the employee has memorized and is therefore misappropriating the trade secrets.  Or it involves a similarly-attenuated fact pattern:  the employer has no restrictive covenant at all and there is no evidence of tangible misappropriation (i.e., no evidence of thumbdrives or downloading, no Dropbox or GoogleDoc dumps, nor emailed documents to personal email accounts), but it relies on a trade secret claim that an employee must still be using those trade secrets because they are successfully competing.

The two decisions, CAE Integrated, Inc. v. Moov Technologies, Inc., issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and First Interstate BancSystem, Inc. v. Hubert, issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, both reach the same conclusion:  an employer has a very high burden to overcome when making a trade secret claim on these facts in the absence of compelling evidence of misappropriation.  As I explain below, taken together, these are significant decisions that demonstrate that employers should think carefully before pursuing employees on claims that the former employees were or would be relying on their memories to improperly use trade secrets rooted in customer identity or customer preferences.
Continue Reading Working through the Thicket of Memory, Misappropriation and the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine: Two Recent Cases Demonstrate Judicial Skepticism

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There is a significant amount of activity going on in the trade secret and restrictive covenant space, so I am going to do my best to resume my monthly wrap up posts, after a long (although some might say not long enough) hiatus.  Without further ado, here are the noteworthy developments of the past month:

Noteworthy Defend Trade Secrets Act Cases, Federal Trade Secret Opinions and Related Commentary:

  • The Motorola v. Hytera litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has generated a number of noteworthy developments, including a seminal opinion affirming the DTSA’s extraterritorial reach, as well as a substantial jury verdict ($597 million).  Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Norgle denied a request to reconsider his denial of Motorola’s request for a permanent injunction (that earlier opinion can be found here December 17, 2020).  The December 17, 2020 opinion provides an excellent analysis of the roadmap courts will likely follow when contemplating a permanent injunction in connection with a significant monetary award (spoiler alert:  a royalty looks like the best option given the reality that the trade secrets have now been monetized).  In his most recent July 5, 2022 ruling, Judge Norgle notes that Hytera’s inability to satisfy the judgment might establish the irreparable injury element necessary for that injunction, but Hytera’s pending appeal forecloses his ability to exercise jurisdiction on that order.  Stay tuned for the Seventh Circuit’s eventual ruling.
  • A recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit should serve as a reminder to trade secret owners to make sure their claim of misappropriation is sufficiently tied to the proximate cause required for damages.  Kyle Jahner of Bloomberg Law has a summary of that decision, GeoMetWatch Corp. v. Hall, et. al, Case No. 19-4130, in which the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of those claims on the grounds their damages were speculative.
  • Are federal courts imposing higher pleading standards on trade secret owners to identify their trade secrets with particularity?  Foley & Hoag’s Jeff Lewis, Paul Downs and Robert Haney Jr. persuasively argue that a consensus for that higher standard is emerging in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and elsewhere.
  • Is manipulating documents produced in discovery enough to get you sanctioned?  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit says “kind of.”  In REXA Inc. v. Chester, the Seventh Circuit reversed an order imposing sanctions on the plaintiff for producing documents in a manner that obscured, among other things, whether the defendant had actually signed an employment agreement.  The Seventh Circuit reasoned that while this discovery misconduct was troubling, the $2.3 million in attorneys’ fees for that misconduct were not sufficiently broken down and remanded for further consideration.
  • If you’re a trade secret owner trying to fend off a motion for summary judgment and get your case to a jury, take a look at U.S. Magistrate Christina Bryan’s Memorandum and Recommendation in Vest Safety v. Arbor Environmental, LLC.  The opinion, which comes out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas’ Houston Division, shows how a well-organized and tight trade secret claim — addressing among other things, the §757 of Restatement of Tort’s comment b  six factor test — can survive such a motion.
  • What comes first, a motion to challenge jurisdiction or a preliminary injunction?  In Aquate II v. Jesse Myers, the U.S. District Court of Alabama elected to entertain a motion challenging subject matter jurisdiction rather than the pending motion for preliminary injunction.  Although U.S. District Court of for the Northern District of Alabama Judge Abdul Kallon does not provide a lot of analysis for that choice, the decision provides support that challenges to subject matter jurisdiction can take priority.

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Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (August 2, 2022): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Cases, Developments and Posts

One of the primary arguments for enacting the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) in 2016 was the perceived need for the protection of the trade secrets of U.S. companies abroad.  These issues received significant media attention with the focus far and away on China; by way of example, 60 Minutes cited the Justice Department as saying “the scale of China’s corporate espionage is so vast it constitutes a national security emergency, with China targeting virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, and costing American companies hundreds of billions of dollars in losses — and more than two million jobs.”  A consensus emerged that existing civil trade secret remedies at the state court level were inadequate.  These concerns led to calls for a robust federal statute that would provide a civil remedy empowering federal courts to assert their jurisdiction over parties outside the United States.  An important decision issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois last year, Motorola Solutions v. Hytera Communications Corp.,  2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35942 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 31, 2020), paved the way for other federal courts over the past year to exercise jurisdiction over international actors and international conduct under the DTSA.  This blog post summarizes these recent decisions.
Continue Reading Trade Secrets Without Borders: The Defend Trade Secret Act’s Promise as an Extra-Territorial Statute Finally Comes to Pass

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Given the ubiquity of thumb-drives and use of personal devices for work, it should come as no surprise that former employees frequently download and even retain their former employer’s sensitive information on their personal devices.  A Symantec study in 2013 found that ½ of the employees surveyed admitted to keeping confidential corporate data from their previous employer and 40% planned to use it in their new jobs.  However, is the fact that an employee downloaded confidential information, standing alone, enough to trigger a lawsuit and possibly an injunction?  A recent case out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, AUA Private Equity Partners, LLC v. Soto, Case No. 1:17-cv-8035 (April 5, 2018), held downloading and refusing to return confidential information was enough to give rise to a claim under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) (for more on that case, see William Brian London’s post for Fisher & Phillips’ Non-Compete and Trade Secrets Blog).  As for the other question — whether a court will be willing to enter an injunction based on downloading — the answer is less clear.
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Continue Reading Is Downloading Confidential Information Enough For An Injunction Under The Defend Trade Secrets Act?

As you will see, I have changed the format of my monthly wrap up post in two ways.  First, I am going to start including links to noteworthy decisions that I come across or are forwarded to me.  Unfortunately, since neither I nor other bloggers writing in this space can cover everything, this will be a useful feature for those practicing in this area.  Second, I am going to provide more commentary on some posts and cases, in the hope of creating further dialogue on many trade secret and non-compete issues.  Given the hot button nature of some of these issues, I am going to share my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.  Now, on to posts and links from the last month:

Legislative Developments

  • Last week, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy and Ron Wyden announced their intention to introduce the Workers Mobility Act (WMA) that would abolish non-competes throughout the United States.  As many of you will recall, Senator Murphy previously introduced a similar bill, the Mobility and Opportunity for Vulnerability Employees Act (MOVE) but that bill stalled on the Senate floor.  Russell Beck has a post with a link to the House and Senate bills, along with his well-reasoned concerns about the breadth and scope of the bills.
  • A blog post about legislation over non-competes wouldn’t be complete if there wasn’t some mention of some activity in Massachusetts.  Key features of the latest bill under serious consideration would limit non-competes to 12 months (unless the employee stole trade secrets or breached his fiduciary duty) and finally adopt the UTSA.  For more details, see Russell Beck’s post in his Fair Competition Blog.
  • Idaho (repealing its recent changes in 2016) and Utah (restricting their use against broadcasters) have recently amended their statutes addressing restrictive covenants.  See Russell Beck again.
  • Colorado has modified its law affecting physician non-competes, carving out protections for physicians treating patients with rare genetic disorders to eliminate any interruption of care for those patients.  Peter Greene summarizes the changes in Epstein Becker’s Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility Blog.

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Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (May 8, 2018): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Non-Compete Cases, Developments and Posts

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Here are the noteworthy trade secret and restrictive covenant posts from September and some of October:

Legislative Developments
  • Massachusetts is once again contemplating multiple bills regarding non-competes as well as a possible adoption of what appears to be the DTSA advises Russell Beck in his Fair Competition Blog.  Russell and his team also have summaries of legislative activity in Maryland, Maine, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia, among others.

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Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (October 27, 2017): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Posts from Around the Web