Andrew Stark

Connect: Read more about Andrew Stark
Firm/Organization: Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Blogs: Consumer Class Defense Blog, Trading Secrets

Latest Articles

As readers of this blog well know, there is a growing trend of state legislatures seeking to limit or outright ban non-competes. (See here, here, and here as just a few examples of state efforts to curb non-competes—not to mention the proposed federal legislation and international efforts—in the last six months.) Last week, the Washington Senate jumped on the bandwagon by passing a bill with a 30–18 vote that would severely limit…
After being slapped with a post-trial judgment last April totaling $2.2 million for misappropriation of confidential and proprietary information, two Wyoming bank executives were named in an unprecedented “Notice of Intent to Prohibit” filed in December by the Federal Reserve Board.  If these executives thought that more than two million dollars in civil liability was harsh, they were mistaken, as they now face a much harsher consequence:  a ban from the banking business…
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Last week, Florida Senator Marco Rubio introduced the “Freedom to Compete Act” (the “Act”) proposing to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 to ban non-competes for most non-exempt workers. The Act is broadly drafted to void any agreement that restricts “any work for another employer,” “any work in a specified geographical area,” and “any work for another employer that is similar” to the employee’s prior work. While it purports to…
On October 25-­27, 2018, Seyfarth attorneys will be attending the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (AIPLA) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.—this is one of the preeminent events for trade secret practitioners across the country.  Boston partner Erik Weibust will formally take on the role of Vice Chair of the AIPLA’s Trade Secrets Law Committee at the Annual Meeting, and Seyfarth’s National Litigation Department Chair Katherine Perrelli is presenting “Strategies for Enforcing Compliance with Trade Secret…
In Seyfarth’s third installment in its 2018 Trade Secrets Webinar Series, Seyfarth attorneys Kate Perrelli, Dawn Mertineit, Justin Beyer, and Andrew Stark focused on trade secret audits, with an emphasis on the importance of a proactive, systematic approach to assessing and protecting trade secret portfolios. As a conclusion to this well-received webinar, we compiled a summary of takeaways: Recent government and news media attention on trade secret theft serves as a firm reminder of the…
The battle for control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) raged on this Thursday during oral argument before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in English v. Trump. All three panel judges seemed skeptical of English’s claim that she should be acting director of the CFPB, but two judges questioned whether President Trump could appoint Mulvaney as acting director when a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act states that…
On Monday, January 29th, Faraday & Future Inc., the electric car manufacturer founded by Chinese billionaire and entrepreneur Jia Yueting, filed a one-count Defend Trade Secrets Act complaint against Evelozcity, Inc., an electric car manufacturer that was recently created by Faraday & Future’s former CFO and CTO.  The case is Faraday & Future Inc. v. Evelozcity Inc., 18-cv-00737, U.S. District Court, Central District of California (Western Division).…
The Massachusetts legislature is back at it again. Under new leadership, the Joint Committee on Labor & Workforce Development recently scheduled a hearing for October 31, 2017 on the non-compete reform bills proposed in January of this year. While we know little about the hearing, the bills to be discussed are presumably Senate Bill S.988 and companion House Bill H.2366. These identical bills were filed in January 2017 by the same legislators who began this…
The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) states very clearly that an injunction issued pursuant thereto may not “prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship,” and that any conditions placed on a former employee’s employment in an injunction must be based on “evidence of threatened misappropriation and not merely on the information the person knows.” (Emphasis added). This language appears to bar injunctive relief under the DTSA based on the “inevitable disclosure doctrine,” which…
In a recent formal Ethics Opinion, the American Bar Association stressed that lawyers must make reasonable efforts to prevent inadvertent or unauthorized access to confidential information relating to the representation of their clients. The ABA recognized that in the age of constant cybersecurity threats, law firms are targets for hackers for two reasons: (1) they obtain, store and use highly sensitive information about their clients while at times utilizing safeguards to shield that information…