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The issue of trade secret identification, on its face, seems like an elementary and uncontroversial one.  In concept, every trade secret plaintiff should be expected to identify the trade secrets in the lawsuit it brings.  After all, the plaintiff knows best what it considers to be a trade secret and what it doesn’t consider to be a trade secret, and the defendant shouldn’t be left to guess what those trade secrets might be.  For these and other reasons, California, a key bellwether state for trade secret law, has long required by statute that a party claiming trade secret misappropriation identify those trade secrets with specificity before being permitted to conduct discovery relating to its trade secret claim.  However, nothing tests the limits of common sense like the realities of litigation, and plaintiffs in California have complained that this procedure has been misused by defendants to frustrate or derail otherwise meritorious trade secret cases.  Perhaps for these reasons, courts outside California remain divided over the so-called California rule as several recent rulings have demonstrated. Continue Reading Are Other States Following California’s Lead On Trade Secret Identification?

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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.

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

Uber

One of the most hotly contested disputes in the Waymo v. Uber trade secrets lawsuit has centered around the disclosure of a forensic consultant’s due diligence report that Uber commissioned after learning that its former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, had taken confidential files from his former employer Waymo.  Uber and Levandowski had vigorously resisted the production of the report but the court order directing its production was recently affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  That due diligence report, which was prepared by the reputable forensics firm Stroz Friedberg, has now been made public.  As I discuss below, the report is a jarring document and it has information that may be damaging to both sides.  However, its most significant contribution to the lawsuit may be the fact that Uber’s own consultant (Stroz Friedberg) was providing multiple red flags to Uber that it was going to pay $680 million to someone that Stroz Friedberg suspected had lied, destroyed key documents and orchestrated efforts with other former Waymo employees to frustrate its investigation.  Waymo is not unscathed by the report either, as it is evident that substantial amounts of highly confidential information made its way out the door, calling into question the safeguards Waymo had in place to protect trade secrets it is now valuing at over $1.8 billion.  A copy of the due diligence report can be found here.

Continue Reading Waymo v. Uber: How Damaging is the Stroz Friedberg Due Diligence Report?

05022013

Here are the noteworthy trade secret, restrictive covenant and cybersecurity posts from the month of August (warning, there are a lot):

Defend Trade Secrets Act

  • Munger Tolles’ Miriam Kim, Carolyn Hoecker Luedtke and Laura Smolowe have put together another fine summary of the trends they are tracking under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.  There are several interesting findings in the summary.  For example, state courts and state law remain the preferred forum and substantive law for trade secrets claimants, at least at this time.  According to the summary, while 378 DTSA cases have been filed in federal and state courts, more than 515 complaints with trade secret claims have been filed with no DTSA claims in federal and state courts throughout the U.S.  I have to admit that I was surprised by this finding, as I expected that litigants would be eager to secure a federal forum using the DTSA.  I suspect that most of those state law cases involve restrictive covenants and that the plaintiffs are more comfortable with a local judge enforcing a non-compete or want to avoid entanglements arising from the DTSA’s limitations on injunctions.  Or it might be that they simply want to go with the law they know best, which would be the more developed state trade secret law regime.  In any event, a very interesting finding.
  • One of the more recent (and unexpected) developments under the DTSA has been the number of motions to dismiss challenging DTSA claims.  Olga May has a post for Fish & Richardson’s Litigation Blog detailing those decisions on those motions, which range from challenges to the specificity of the trade secrets pleaded to whether the complaint comports with the standards under Twombly and Iqbal.
  • For an update on the modest number of ex parte seizure order filings under the DTSA, see Michael Renuad of Mintz Levn’s article in the National Law Journal.

Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (Sept. 8, 2017): Noteworthy Trade Secrets, Non-Compete and Cybersecurity Posts from Around the Web

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Here are the noteworthy trade secret, restrictive covenant and cybersecurity posts from the past month or so:

The Defend Trade Secrets Act

  • The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has found that certain deer registry information qualified as a combination trade secret under the DTSA and Oklahoma’s version of the UTSA, as explained by Michael Weil and Tierra Piens for Orrick’s Trade Secrets Watch blog.
  • The issue of whether the DTSA applies to misappropriation that may have taken place prior to the DTSA’s enactment has been one of the more frequent areas of litigation under the DTSA.  Jonathan Shapiro of Epstein Becker has a summary on these cases for Law360.

Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (July 31, 2017): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Non-Compete Posts From Around the Web

A recent opinion from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has stirred up a hornets’ nest of commentary because it appears to recognize the viability of the inevitable disclosure doctrine under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA).  Those familiar with the DTSA will recall that the inevitable disclosure doctrine was supposed to be prohibited under the DTSA because of California Senator Diane Feinstein’s concern that the doctrine might be enforced against California residents.  Now, in what appears to be the first federal appellate court opinion construing the DTSA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit may have further muddied the waters about the inevitable disclosure doctrine in Fres-co Systems USA, Inc. v. Hawkins, Case No. 16-3591, ___ Fed. Appx. __ (3rd Cir. 2017), 2017 WL 2376568 (June 1, 2017) (a link to the opinion can found here). Continue Reading Fres-co Systems v. Hawkins: Did The Third Circuit Just Create More Confusion Around The DTSA’s Ban On The Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine?

Uber

Yesterday, Uber released a letter that it had sent to Anthony Levandowski notifying him of its intention to terminate him as an employee because of his failure to cooperate with an Order issued on May 11, 2017 by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup.   While most of the media coverage of the case had previously focused on the portion of the Order effectively quarantining Levandowski from Uber’s development of its LiDAR technology, perhaps the most noteworthy portions of the Order proved to be Judge Alsup’s directives to Uber to get to the bottom of what Waymo trade secrets Levandowski might have shared with others at Uber.  (A link to Judge Alsup’s Order can be found here).  As I explain below, those two paragraphs of Judge Alsup’s Order inevitably set Uber against Levandowski and led to his termination.
Continue Reading Why Uber’s Firing of Anthony Levandowski Became Inevitable

As the first year anniversary of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) has just passed, it is worth taking a step back and taking stock of how courts have treated key provisions.  This will be the first of several posts covering developments under the DTSA and analyzing how it has been used since its enactment.

One of the most-discussed features of the DTSA was its creation of a “whistleblower” immunity that allows employees to share evidence of an employer’s alleged misconduct with government authorities or present that evidence in support of a retaliation claim under seal in court and avoid a claim that the employee misappropriated trade secrets when they disclosed that information. This provision, 18 U.S.C. §1833, is the only provision of the DTSA that preempts state law, so it affords protection to an employee against an employer’s claims under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act or common law as well.

As readers may recall, the DTSA requires employers who want to take advantage of the DTSA’s full protections to amend their contracts, employee agreements, and policies to provide notice of that whistleblower defense to its employees, which has been broadly defined to include independent contractors.  If a company fails to include that notice in its agreements or policies, it is foreclosed from seeking claims for attorney’s fees and exemplary damages under the DTSA.  The DTSA broadly defines an employee to include “any individual performing work as a contractor or consultant for an employer” so both 1099 and W-2 employees are covered under this provision.whistle 2

Not surprisingly, when the DTSA was enacted, many employers were concerned about what, if any notice, needed to be supplied to its employees about this immunity and to what extent they needed to amend their employment agreements and policies.  Section 1833(b)(3)(B) makes clear that an employer can comply with this notice provision if its employment agreement simply cross-references a policy document that more fully describes the employer’s reporting policy for a suspected violation of the law.  However, the DTSA does not define what kind of notice or language must be provided, so it remains an open question of whether a specific citation to the DTSA would be sufficient or whether the relevant language of the DTSA’s whistleblower provision needs to be included.

To date, there is only one case involving the DTSA’s whistleblower provision.  This should not come as too much of a surprise since the whistleblower provision’s primary consequences — a challenge to an award of attorneys’ fees or exemplary damages under the DTSA for failure to provide notice of that immunity  or the viability of the immunity itself– will generally require that a case have been fully litigated, something that has not happened with many DTSA cases. Continue Reading The Defend Trade Secrets Act After One Year: The Whistleblower Provision

AT_YOUR_OWN_RISKWhen moving to enforce a non-compete, the last thing a litigator wants to do is to stumble out of the gates and struggle over a profound legal issue that could delay consideration of that normally urgent request.   A new and little-talked-about section of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), however, has the potential to trip up employers seeking to enforce non-competes if they are not prepared to address this new entanglement.

There has been a significant amount of commentary about the DTSA and its new amendments since President Obama signed the DTSA into law on May 11, 2016. The “whistle-blower” immunity and ex parte seizure order, for example, have generated the most discussion to this point.  However, the section of the DTSA that may have the greatest future impact on litigation under the DTSA is 18 U.S.C. §1839(3)(A)(i)(1)(I), which prohibits injunctions that “prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship.”

That new provision, which I will refer to as the “No-Ban-on-Employment” provision, was intended to curb, if not eliminate, the use of the inevitable disclosure doctrine under the DTSA.  However, it may have a significant unintended consequence–namely, it may complicate employers’ efforts to enforce non-competes through temporary restraining orders (TRO), the key legal mechanism for non-compete disputes.  For the reasons below, employers may want to reconsider invoking the DTSA when they want to enforce their non-competes because of the potential complications of this section’s language and instead opt to file them in state court, at least in the short-term.  As the DTSA is likely to overtake the Uniform Trade Secret Act (UTSA) as the dominant statutory regime for trade secret law, this DTSA provision may well set another blow in motion to the viability of the non-compete as an effective tool to protect trade secrets.

Continue Reading Does the Defend Trade Secrets Act Contain a Potential Roadblock for Non-Competes? Why the DTSA’s Limitations on the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine May Complicate Enforcing Non-Competes

Today’s post wraps up the Trade Secret Litigator’s Five Golden Rules for on-boarding a new employee and, fittingly, falls on Halloween. Today’s remaining Golden Rules primarily address the steps an employer needs to take in managing the employee who has been hired, and, as the case law reveals, may prevent various tricks (and rarely treats) to the new employer.

Golden Rule No. 3. The Visentin Rule: Protect the Legitimate Business Interests of the Former Employer. Having taken the steps to avoid or minimize risk during the hiring process, an employer still has to properly manage the employee once he/she joins the company, especially if that employee has a non-compete or non-solicitation agreement with his/her former employer. Fortunately, one of the leading cases on managing an employee with a covenant not to compete provides a textbook example of how to handle this situation. That case, IBM v. Visentin, came out of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2012. In Visentin, the new employer, Hewlett-Packard undertook a number of affirmative steps to ensure that IBM’s trade secrets were protected and agreed that the new employee would not solicit his former customers for the remainder of the term of the non-compete.

The Southern District and Second Circuit approved of these efforts and refused to enjoin the employee – a mid-level manager – from working at HP. In the absence of any proof of misconduct by the employee, those courts found that this was a proper way to protect IBM’s trade secret and customer relationship interests while balancing the former employee’s right to find proper gainful employment.

The Visentin approach was also applied effectively by Google earlier this year in a high-profile dispute over its hiring of a cloud computing services manager who had worked previously for Amazon.com and was subject to a non-compete. As in Visentin, the Washington district court found that in the absence of evidence of misconduct by the former employee, Amazon.com’s interests were adequately protected by the safeguards put in place by Google to protect its trade secrets.

Of course, this approach is not foolproof, as the holding in a recent Massachusetts case, Aspect Software v. Barnett, unfortunately demonstrates. In that case, despite similar good faith efforts by the new employer and former employee, the court still enforced the non-compete at issue, although it commended the new employer and former employee for their efforts.

At the end of the day, an employer will increase its odds of avoiding litigation or minimizing its risk in that litigation by taking affirmative steps to prevent the use or disclosure of the competitor’s trade secrets and minimize intrusion into legitimately protected customer relationships. I have found that these steps are particularly effective in the “cease and desist” letter stage because they serve to put the former employer on notice that it may not have a basis for a lawsuit and can effectively give that employer pause before initiating litigation.

Golden Rule No. 4: If Litigation is Possible, Preserve, Preserve, Preserve. Given the reality of BYOD and the overlap between work and personal time, it is practically inevitable that some confidential information will make its way onto an employee’s personal computer or devices. This sometimes puts an employee between the proverbial rock and a hard place: if the employee deletes the information, there may be a claim of spoliation of evidence or a claim of some nefarious purpose behind the deletion. Alternatively, if the employee does not remove or delete the confidential information, he or she will almost certainly be accused of having improperly used or taken it.

As a result, if there is a chance of litigation, it is critical to preserve what was on the devices before deleting it. This means that forensic computer consultant will need to be engaged and likely image all devices before the information is removed and the devices sanitized under the guidance of counsel and that consultant. The images will then need to be kept by outside counsel so that they can be produced in litigation, if necessary.

Golden Rule No. 5: Keep a Close Eye on Mass Hirings. As readers of this blog know, cases involving the hiring of a team of people from a competitor (especially a sales team) generate the greatest waves and present the greatest risk of trade secret litigation by a former employer. The group dynamics in these situations also seem to foster greater opportunities for mischief — i.e., more pressure on business units and new hires to perform, the fact that the team may have been hired for a specific product, client or opportunity, etc. This means that in-house counsel and HR administrators need to monitor, follow up on, and continue to train these teams on the importance of preserving the confidentiality of the legitimate trade secrets of their former employer.

Last year’s Allergan v. Merz case out of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California illustrates the special dangers associated with hiring teams of people. In that case, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction enjoining the rollout of the cosmetic drug Xeomin for 10 months because he found that a sales team hired from Allergan had improperly used confidential marketing and customer information for Botox in connection with the prospective launch of Xeomin. Based on statements made at an early hearing, the outside and in-house counsel did not know about communications between the new sales team and its managers disseminating that confidential information and argued that Merz had no intention of using Allergan’s trade secrets. However, a year after defeating a TRO, Merz’s counsel produced documents that were contrary to those representations.

How can in-house counsel and outside counsel avoid this disaster? It starts with a culture of security and responsibility. Both in-house and outside counsel need to know that their business people have their back and that a culture respecting the rules outlined above will be enforced. In the Allergan v. Merz case, the disconnect between what was apparently going on at the Merz business level and what the lawyers understood was going on is striking. This suggests, at least to me, that the appropriate follow up was not done to ensure that counsel’s representations about not using Allergan’s trade secrets would be followed.

The best way to ensure new teams are following the rules of their new employer includes: (1) an emphatic initial face-to-face meeting communicating the importance of leaving the prior employer’s trade secrets behind, preferably chaired by the head of the business group, (2) periodic follow up, certifications and acknowledgements that no trade secrets or confidential information are being used or retained, and (3) training to reinforce those principles. However, all of the follow up in the world will be ineffective if managers and supervisors have not bought into these principles and do not enforce them among their team.

In sum, as these cases illustrate, courts will generally reward the employer who imposes safeguards and acts responsibly; conversely, the failure to on-board properly can be catastrophic.