Protecting Scientific and High Tech Trade Secrets

Description

Protecting client lists is critically important to scientific and high tech businesses. Ensuring that employees will not disclose protected information is key. Attorneys for these companies must take affirmative steps to protect such information by crafting, implementing and enforcing restrictive covenants.

Employees increasingly connect with clients through social media, developing relationships that benefit their employers—until the employee leaves the company. Recent federal court cases demonstrate the difficult line between employees' right to connect in social media and the protection of trade secrets.

In Sasqua Group v. Courtney, the court ruled that because the client list could easily be identified through sites like LinkedIn, it was not a trade secret. In TEKsystems v. Hammernick, a company alleged former employees used inside knowledge of its clients to solicit them through LinkedIn.

Listen as our authoritative panel of employment and media law attorneys provides practical advice for counsel to high-tech companies on revising outdated restrictive covenants to address the social media connections of employees. The panel will outline challenges in and approaches to drafting, implementing and enforcing these covenants in the workplace.