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Articles Posted in Trade Secrets

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NJ officially adopts the Trade Secrets Act

As reported here in September, the State of New Jersey was recommending passage of the New Jersey Trade Secrets Act. Well, welcome to the party, pal. (Or is it Powell?). Last week, NJ became the 47th state to adopt a version of the uniform trade secrets act as Governor Christie signed…

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Who owns the LinkedIn account you maintain for an employee?

powered by Fotopedia Yesterday, we looked at a recent federal-court decision to determine whether LinkedIn connections are considered trade secrets. Today, after the jump, we look at whether your business has any protectible interest in a LinkedIn account that you create and maintain for your employees. * * * Let’s…

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Are employees’ LinkedIn contacts considered your trade secrets?

Over the past several weeks, you probably read about this case involving a company suing one of its former employees whom it alleges misappropriated a Twitter account and, along with it, 17,000 Twitter followers that the company believes it owns. A video about the case follows below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hV2lCnG5VA A fight over…

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If Lady Gaga tweets your trade secret, is it still a trade secret?

In a matter of minutes, or even seconds, a single tweet may reach thousands or, possibly, millions of people. Now, just imagine if that tweet contained proprietary information. (You know, like if Lady Gaga tweeted the code to Microsoft Windows 7 to her millions of followers). Ummm…work with me here……

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Is a non-compete agreement signed months after work begins enforceable?

I was reading a blog post from Jennifer L. Gokenbach at the Colorado Employer’s Law Blog, discussing how, as of yesterday, Colorado deems continuation of at-will employment to be sufficient consideration to support a non-competition agreement. In non-lawyer speak, that means that if an employee signs an agreement not-to-compete in Colorado…

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Misclassifying an employee may void a non-compete agreement

In an unpublished opinion, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied a Pennsylvania company’s attempt to enjoin a former employee, who had entered into several restrictive covenants with the company, to compete directly against the company and solicit its customers. What did this employer do wrong and how can you…

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4 ways employers can protect themselves when employees leave

This story that I wrote with my Dilworth Paxson LLP colleague, David Laigaie, the Chair of Dilworth’s Corporate Investigation/White Collar Group, recently appeared in The Legal Intelligencer. If you operate a business in Pennsylvania and you have trade secrets, employees with non-solicitation agreements, or non-competition agreements, then take a few…

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Can employees use your confidential documents to prove discrimination?

If you are reading this and you are a New Jersey employer, then the answer is yes. But only under certain circumstances. I’ll lay out the test for you after the jump. In Quinlan v. Curtiss-Wright Corp., the New Jersey Supreme Court adopted what it termed a “flexible totality of…