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Category Archives: Trade Secret
Here are three reasons companies need to have acceptable use policies to govern internet and computer usage amongst their employees: Companies should be ensuring that their employees are spending their time at work doing what the companies are paying them to do – work Employee activity on the internet can introduce viruses, spambots and other malware into the company, which spread rapidly and can cause substantial losses What employees are doing on company computers has numerous legal ramifications, including trade secrets issues, civil lawsuits and criminal charges Companies should take care to craft acceptable use policies that specifically prohibit the conduct outlined above. Other important parts of acceptable use policies include the following: Detail as many specific, prohibited acts as possible; if there are certain types of websites (for example, gambling or sexually explicit ones), list those specifically Prohibit the distribution of confidential company information (this past summer, the federal…
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Just a few years ago, researchers at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno, Nevada made a break through that received worldwide attention. They made a finding that linked chronic fatigue syndrome with the XMRV retrovirus. One of the lead researchers from that team, Judy Mikovits, now faces charges pertaining to her alleged theft of trade secrets from the Institute. The Institute fired Mikovits in September, and Mikovits left with notebooks, e-mails and data regarding her research. Some of it was her work, and some of it involved the work of others at the Institute. A Reno judge recently found for the Institute in its lawsuit against Mikovits for breach of contract and the misappropriation of trade secrets. After the Institute brought the lawsuit, Mikovits did turn over some of the materials she had taken, but not all of it. The Institute said that she kept most of…
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In trade secrets cases we have commented on in the past, we have seen how difficult it can be for the plaintiff company to prove that a former employee misappropriated trade secrets in the absence of physical proof like the theft of a valuable document. These cases are much easier to prove when there is a smoking gun, so to speak, like the theft of something tangible. Trade secrets theft is much more difficult to prove, however, when all you have are the contents of a former employee’s mind. Trade secrets law in California strikes a balance between the two extremes of prosecuting trade secrets cases. On the one hand, it would be unreasonable for companies to have to prove physical theft in every trade secrets case. This would tend to favor wrongdoers, as former employees could simply memorize or study valuable trade secrets without the existence of any tangible…
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