If you have seen any of our prior articles concerning the China Initiative, you know the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) is still focused on actively investigating individuals with ties to China who are suspected of trade secrets theft. However, the failure of recent China Initiative prosecutions raises an issue as to which companies involved in academic and scientific research may be targeted going forward.
Employers in many industries use non-compete agreements as a key tool to protect trade secrets. According to U.S. Treasury reports, non-compete agreements impact approximately 30 million – nearly one in five – U.S. workers, including roughly one in six workers without a college degree.
Some employers have imposed non-compete agreements across a broad segment of their workforce, including imposing them on low-wage earning employees and employees who are not privy to trade secrets or other confidential information. Non-compete agreement opponents argue that such broad non-compete agreements can interfere with the employee’s right to make a living without any off-setting benefit for the employer. In the past few years, state attorneys general have been successfully suing companies to invalidate what many see as overly-expansive non-compete agreements.
As we previously reported, on August 14, 2017, President Trump signed an executive memo asking U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to determine whether to launch an investigation into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Later that week, after a review of Chinese laws, policies, and practices relating to IP, Lighthizer recommended and launched an investigation “to determine whether acts, policies, and practices of the Government of China related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.” READ MORE
