Seyfarth Partner and Trade Secrets, Computer Fraud & Non-Competes Practice Group Co-Chair Katherine Perrelli was recently named chair of the Trade Secrets and Interferences with Contracts Committee of the American Bar Association Intellectual Property Section for the 2020-2021 bar year. The Trade Secrets and Interferences with Contracts Committee is focused on issues arising under federal, state, and foreign laws addressing trade secrets, unfair interference with contractual rights, and related unfair competition causes of action, including…

Dawn Mertineit and Robert Milligan authored an article in the Daily Journal, “‘Can’t we just be like California?’ Another solution in search of a problem.” The Seyfarth partners said while historically the issue of noncompete enforcement has been left to the states, the last year has seen the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission begin to examine the effect of such covenants on the labor market. The authors question why the…

The 2020 edition of The Legal 500 United States recommends Seyfarth Shaw’s Trade Secrets group as one of the best in the country. Nationally, for the fifth consecutive year, our Trade Secrets practice earned Top Tier. Based on feedback from corporate counsel, Seyfarth partner Michael Wexler was ranked in the editorial’s “Leading Lawyers,” and Robert Milligan, Katherine Perrelli, Erik Weibust, and J. Scott Humphrey were also recommended in the editorial. The Legal 500 United States…

Tens of millions of employees have been laid off or furloughed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that the reopening process has begun in most states, many of those employees are being rehired and reactivated. For the month of May 2020, the unemployment rate actually started to decline after the massive increase over the prior few months, as businesses began the return to normal and employers who obtained relief from the Paycheck Protection…

On Tuesday, July 14th at 1 p.m. Eastern, Seyfarth partner Robert Milligan is presenting a 90-minute Strafford CLE webinar, “Noncompetes Under New State Law Restrictions: Wage Requirements, Notice, Time, Layoffs, Proposed Federal Legislation.” The program will discuss recent state legislative changes and case law trends regarding non-compete agreements and other restrictive covenants in New York, California, Illinois, Washington, and other states, as well as look at the proposed changes to federal labor law. The panel…

The American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Trade Secret Summit will be held virtually this year. The Summit will consist of two 45-minute presentations every Wednesday beginning on August 12 and ending on September 2. Erik Weibust is Vice Chair of the AIPLA’s Trade Secret Committee, which hosts the Summit each year, and Scott Humphrey will be moderating a panel this year entitled “The Use of Litigation Funding in Trade Secret Cases,” with panelists from two…

Seyfarth attorneys Erik Weibust, Alison Eggers, and Anne Dunne recently published an article entitled “Why It’s Important to Bake Restrictive Covenants into Food and Beverage Industry Agreements” in Retail & Food Best Practices, an industry publication for the retail and food industry. Recipes, ingredients, formulas, and processes are sometimes kept secret for generations in the food and beverage industry, and protecting these secrets can be essential to a company’s survival. Threats to trade…