Kavitha Gupta's blog

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Protecting Employee Mobility and Negative Trade Secrets Reference:https://www.law.com/therecorder By  Maxwell V. Pritt  | UPDATEDMar 12, 2018 at 03:02 Boies Schiller Flexner When Judge William Alsup asked the lawyers in  Waymo v. Uber —the recent showdown over self-driving car technology—if engineers really had to get lobotomies before going to their next job, he wasn’t just asking if they had to “forget” what makes their former employers’ technology work. He was also asking if they had to forget what did  not  work for their former employers. Unfortunately for engineers—and their employers and the competitors that want to hire them—there is no simple answer under California and federal law. While the results of R&D that prove a certain process or approach does not work for a technology could be commercially valuable, the law is unclear on whether that information—“negative trade secrets” or “negative know-how” i...

10 tips for minimizing company liability for terminating employees who steal trade secrets Carlton Fields Jorden Burt prev next USA July 28 2015 When your company uncovers evidence that an employee misappropriated trade secrets it must act swiftly. The company may want to fire the employee to protect itself from the potentially devastating consequences. But how can you minimize the risk that the employee may sue the company claiming he did not misappropriate trade secrets? These tips will minimize the risks posed by an employee’s claim: 1. Inventory your trade secrets and have clear policies. You should know what your trade secrets are and the protocols in-place to safe guard them. There should be policies about access to and use of trade secrets that are informed by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Your policies should be clear that the company owns the computing systems and data and that unauthorized us...