In Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, the Supreme Court strengthened the federal government’s ability to protect trade secrets and confidential business information from disclosure in response to a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request. Food Mktg. Inst. v. Argus Leader Media, __ U.S. __, 139 S. Ct. 2356, 2366 (June 24, 2019). Under the facts of that case, the Court held that where the government received a third-party’s commercial and financial information and…

Pay equity continues to be one of the most significant workforce issues facing employers today. Pay equity laws aim to increase transparency into employers’ pay practices – with the ultimate goal of ensuring that employees are paid fairly regardless of demographic factors including race and gender. However, they may also require employers to release sensitive, propriety information about internal pay practices – which arguably constitute trade secrets – potentially compromising employers’ ability to remain competitive in hiring…

Protecting trade secrets in the digital age is a modern reality, with confidential information easily stored, sent, and received electronically. Nevertheless, the most significant security breaches often arise from human behavior. Join us for a three part webinar series on how you can get ahead of the curve to safeguard your trade secrets. Please join Crowell & Moring Counsel Julia Milewski and Raija Horstman on Tuesday, September 17th, 2019, from 12:00 to 01:00 pm (ET), for Part 1 – …

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…

On June 28, 2019, the Luxembourgish Mémorial published the Law of June 26, 2019 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information better known as trade secrets implementing the EU Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943 after a one year delay. The recent Luxembourgish Law is a literal transposition of the EU Directive and provides a legal definition of “trade secrets,” which was up until now only defined by the courts. The EU Directive defined “trade…

A recent International Trade Commission (ITC) case shows that, although rarely used, the ITC remains a viable option for parties pursuing trade secret misappropriation claims. Trade secret claims can be brought under Section 337(a)(1)(A)’s catch-all for other “unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles”—often called “non-statutory” claims—and can result in remedies that effectively bar the entry of the offending products into the U.S., or prevent their commercialization to the extent…