Search Results for: customer list

“It’s a Free Country, Right?” Court Declines to Enjoin Ex-Free Country Ltd. Employees From Contacting Customers on Purloined Contact List

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Within days of each other, your clothing company―Free Country Ltd.―loses two employees who decamp to a rival to set up a competing apparel line.  You discover that just before leaving, they transferred some 50,000 documents to a personal account—customer orders, your master contact list, and product design information.  Incensed, you file a trade secrets lawsuit […]

In Hawaii, “Aloha” May Mean Both Hello and Goodbye, But When Employees Leave, Who Owns the Customer Relationships?

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As we’ve observed over the years, when addressing trade secrets claims based on customer lists, courts have landed all over the place. These cases involve difficult questions such as when an employee develops relationships on behalf of Company A but then leaves for Company B, who “owns” those relationships? A recent federal district court decision […]

Baring It All: Judge Orders Swingers’ Club to Produce Email Distribution List

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A recent case in the Southern District of Florida serves as a reminder that even trade secrets may be subject to production to opposing counsel. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman recently ordered a defendant “swingers’” club to produce its email distribution list to plaintiffs in Edmonson v. Velvet Lifestyles, LLC (S.D. Fla. Dec. 5, 2016).

FOURTH OF JULY EDITION: Family Fireworks: Plot to Steal Client Lists Goes up in Smoke

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For many, Fourth of July festivities wouldn’t be complete without a baseball game, a family barbecue, and of course, fireworks.  But for one family-operated fireworks company in California, its members had an unhappy reunion in court when a great-grandson’s decision to leave the family business exploded into a dazzling dispute over trade secrets. According to […]

Worried About Trade Secret Poaching? Check in With Your Third-party Service Providers

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Hiring external contractors is common practice in the fast-paced tech-industry where talent is scarce and in high-demand, but such a practice can expose a company’s most valuable IP to the confidentiality measures, or lack thereof, of those external contractors. This type of common business model is an area ripe for trade secret theft. University Accounting […]

Making Memories: Trade Secrets Need Not Be in Tangible Form to Be Protectable

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Developments in technology have led to advanced ways of protecting trade secrets. In an age where passwords, metadata, and paper trails are often the stories told to demonstrate misappropriation, it may seem that trade secrets must be reduced to a tangible form to be protected. However, a recent Oregon Court of Appeals opinion reminds us […]

#SecretTweets: Protecting Social Media as a Trade Secret?

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Social media today connects people more than ever. It can be a means to bring together long-lost friends, new acquaintances, and love interests, or the public with celebrities, sports teams, new products, and companies—to name just a few. It can be an effective way to market images and products, as it has the potential to […]

Campaigning for Protection of Political Trade Secrets

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As widely reported, on April 20, the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) kicked off a twelve count lawsuit against a number of entities and individuals, including the Russian Federation, General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (“GRU”), WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, Donald J. Trump, Jr., and other political foes.  Amongst the wide swath of […]

Making a Federal Case Out of It: What Does the DTSA’s “Interstate Commerce” Limitation Mean?

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We’ve blogged a lot about the Defend Trade Secrets Act in the roughly year-and-a-half period since the law was enacted.  Our coverage has run the gamut:  from the first jury verdict under the DTSA, to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s emerging interest in trade secrets, to the once-controversial ex parte seizure provision that, so […]

Pushing the Envelope: Eight Circuit Seals the Fate of Envelope Company’s Trade Secret Claims

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On December 8, 2017, the Eighth Circuit rejected trade secrets and other claims related to allegedly stolen customer lists.  Applying Missouri state law, the federal appellate court continued the Show-Me State’s tradition of looking at customer list trade secrets with a jaundiced eye.