Employee non-compete agreements have long played an important role in employers’ ability to protect confidential and trade secret information. However, recognizing the distinct advantage employers often enjoy in negotiating such agreements, there has been a well-documented trend in recent years toward greater scrutiny of—and even hostility toward—employee non-competes.
Earlier this year, Washington adopted a new law—Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1450—that places significant restrictions on the enforceability of non-competition agreements. The law applies to “every written or oral covenant, agreement, or contract by which an employee or independent contractor is prohibited or restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind.” Importantly, the law does not address nonsolicitation, confidentiality, or trade secrets agreements. Employers using non-competition agreements should understand the key provisions of the law—which takes effect on January 1, 2020—and how they affect their non-competition agreements. READ MORE
You are a state-government contractor. You respond to an RFP issued by a state-government entity. In your bid proposal, you submit documents that contain your trade secrets. You do not get the contract, but you later learn that the state-government entity gave your trade secret information to your direct competitor who did get the contract. Do you have any options under federal or state trade secret laws to sue the state? READ MORE
Oregon recently enacted HB2992, further limiting its already restrictive non-compete law, which will apply to any agreements entered on or after January 1, 2020. The new law amends Oregon’s prior non-compete law by requiring the employer, as a condition of the non-compete’ s enforceability, to provide a signed, written copy of the terms of the non-compete agreement to the employee within thirty days of the termination of employment. This is effectively a mandatory reminder, as Oregon’s non-compete law already required the employer to inform the employee at the outset of employment of the non-compete agreement, either two weeks prior to the employee’s first day of employment or as part of a bona fide advancement of the employee. Oregon’s non-compete law also already required that the employee be in an “administrative, executive, or professional” position and have access to trade secrets, other competitively sensitive information, or be “on-air” talent subject to other restrictions.
Oregon’s state legislature thus created a new hoop for employers to jump through before it can subject a limited subset of employees to non-competes. Oregon’s mandatory reminder at the end of an employee’s employment, and not just at the beginning, further aligns its non-compete law with one of the Obama administration’s final mandates for state legislators to improve the transparency and fairness of non-competes.
As we reported in August, Massachusetts became the penultimate state to enact the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), leaving New York as the sole remaining holdout. Massachusetts’ new law, which took effect October 1, 2018, significantly expanded the state’s existing trade secrets law by broadening protections for trade secret owners and narrowing the scope of noncompete agreements. As we reported earlier this month, the new law does not apply retroactively even if the violation is ongoing in nature.
Just two days after TSW’s inaugural post, we brought you news of Texas becoming the 48th state to enact some form of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA).
Now, roughly five years and one federal trade secrets statute later, Massachusetts has become the 49th state, leaving New York as the lone holdout. The new law, which takes effect on October 1, 2018, is part of an amendment to a $1.1 billion economic development bill that Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed into law on August 10, 2018. With the enactment of the UTSA, Massachusetts courts will have newfound power to enter injunctions against actual or threatened misappropriation of trade secrets.
Just days after the European Union’s widely-discussed new data privacy regulations, the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), took effect on May 25, 2018, another EU-wide legal change quietly occurred. (And if you’re still puzzling through GDPR compliance, fear not: We have plenty of resources for you here.)
But on to the less familiar date: June 9, 2018, was the deadline for EU member states to comply with the new Directive on the Protection of Trade Secrets. As we’ve reported before, the European Parliament adopted the Directive in 2016 to harmonize national laws regarding trade secrets protection. Under the Directive, trade secrets owners across Europe should enjoy increased protection and uniformity—welcome news, given that the laws have historically differed significantly from country to country.
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 far, has been used very little in practice. READ MORE
Just as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has shown a keen interest in better understanding policy concerns and the needs of business stakeholders in the area of trade secrets (see our coverage of both USPTO symposia here and here) against the backdrop of a new federal law, the EU’s IP office is also stepping up its focus on trade secrets following the EU Trade Secrets Directive in 2016 (our coverage here). READ MORE
(Editors’ note: Thanks to Orrick summer associate, Ruben Sindahl, for his help with this blog post.)
Just four years after the Lone Star State ended its holdout by becoming the 48th State to adopt the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Texas passed a bill to amend its enactment. The bill was signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on May 19, 2017, and will take effect on September 1, 2017.
