We are pleased to announce the webinar “Protecting Confidential Information and Client Relationships in the Financial Services Industry” is now available as a podcast and webinar recording.
In Seyfarth’s sixth installment of its 2014 Trade Secrets Webinar series, attorneys Scott Humphrey, Jason Stiehl and Rebecca Woods, focused on trade secret and client relationship considerations in the banking and finance industry, with a particular focus on a firm’s relationship with its FINRA members.
As a conclusion to this well-received webinar, we compiled a list of key takeaway points, which are listed below.
- Enforcement of restrictive covenants and confidentiality obligations for FINRA and non-FINRA members are different. Although FINRA allows a former employer to initially file an injunction action before both the Court and FINRA, FINRA, not the Court, will ultimately decide whether to enter a permanent injunction and/or whether the former employer is entitled to damages as a result of the former employee’s illegal conduct.
- Address restrictive covenant enforcement and trade secret protection before a crisis situation arises. An early understanding of the viability of your restrictive covenants and the steps that you have taken to ensure that your confidential information remains confidential will allow you to successfully and swiftly evaluate your legal options when a crisis arises.
- Understand the Protocol for Broker Recruiting’s impact on your restrictive covenant and confidentially requirements. The Protocol significantly limits the use of restrictive covenants and allows departing brokers to take client and account information with them to their new firm.
- Use of cloud-based services is increasing, including in the financial services industry. This creates different risks for protecting trade secrets with potential theft, exposure, or loss from cloud providers, hackers, and rogue or sloppy employees. A comprehensive and preventative slate of measures should be considered in order to ensure protection from each of these threats and to manage and mitigate the consequences of a compromise of protected information. “Analog” protections, such as confidentiality agreements, employee training, and basic security safeguards remain relevant. “Cloud” protections should be added, however, and include maximizing technology-based security features, negotiating savvy and strong vendor agreements, and obtaining properly-scaled cyber-insurance coverage. Care should also be taken to ensure that compromise of proprietary information that includes personal information may trigger federal and/or state breach notification obligations.
Please join us for our next webinar on September 17th, Ins and Outs of Prosecuting and Defending Trade Secret Injunction Cases