California Business and Professions Code section 16600 states that “every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.” This statute has been interpreted to mean that noncompete agreements in employment contracts are per se invalid in California as an unlawful restraint on trade. Quidel Corp. v. Super. Ct., 39 Cal. App. 5th 530, 539 (2019). However, on August 29, 2019, in Quidel…

Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana bill went into effect in 2016. In order to obtain a permit under that bill, potential medical marijuana grower/processors or dispensaries are required to provide detailed business information with their applications. However, under the state’s Right-to-Know Law (“RTKL”), applicants who can show that information about their security, storage and transportation are trade secrets can avail themselves of an exception to the RTKL and redact trade secrets from applications before they are released…

On August 26th, 2019, a federal indictment was unsealed, revealing that federal prosecutors have brought 33 criminal charges against a former Google engineer who worked on the company’s self-driving car project from its founding in 2009 through his resignation in January 2016. The indictment alleges that in the months before his departure, the former Google employee downloaded from a secure database multiple engineering, manufacturing and business files related to Google’s custom LiDAR and self-driving car technology. The…

As in other states, the enforceability of restrictive covenants or non-compete clauses in the Sixth Circuit turns primarily on the reasonableness of the restriction’s geographic and temporal scope. Michigan has enacted a statute explaining when non-competes may be enforced. In Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, enforcement is determined entirely by common law. In Ohio and Tennessee, courts will consider the public interest in addition to the interests of the parties involved.…

After a week-long trial in June, a jury in the Southern District of Texas awarded digital marketing firm Six Dimensions, Inc. (Dimensions) $287,000 for its breach of contract claim against its former employee, Lynn Brading. However, the jury rejected Dimensions’ $50 million lawsuit against its competitor, Perficient Inc. (Perficient) for stealing its trade secrets.…

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois recently unsealed a December 13, 2017 indictment of Chinese national, Xudong “William” Yao, who was charged with nine counts of trade secret theft. The charges stem from Yao’s theft of more than 3,000 files between September 2014 and February 2015, including trade secret information such as source code and technical specifications, from an unnamed suburban Chicago locomotive manufacturer. The stolen documents generally pertain to…

What could be worse than a competitor misappropriating your trade secret? When a group of competitors conspire to misappropriate your trade secret! Especially in light of a recent decision from the Third Circuit, which held that agreeing to steal a trade secret is not automatically an antitrust violation, meaning it could be very expensive to litigate. The antitrust laws prohibit certain types of agreements. Certain agreements are per se illegal, meaning if the defendants enter…