Federal court in Chicago refuses to issue injunction based upon either an "inevitable disclosure" claim or a 24-month non-compete with an "extremely broad" geographic scope *

USA - January 10 2012
A federal judge in Chicago recently refused to issue an injunction based upon either the “inevitable disclosure” of trade secrets doctrine or a geographically broad, 24-month non-compete that did not have a narrowly drawn activity restriction.

Co-authors: Peter A. Steinmeyer.

Eighth Circuit holds that a compilation of otherwise public information can be a trade secret *

USA - December 22 2011
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently held that compilations containing only minimal secret information nevertheless qualified for trade secret protection because the substantial investment involved in preparing them gave their owner a competitive advantage and because the owner undertook reasonable efforts to maintain their secrecy by labeling them with a proprietary legend and only distributing them to parties which signed a confidentiality agreement.

Erroneous jury instructions cause Kansas Supreme Court to reverse jury verdict in trade secret/restrictive covenant case *

USA - November 22 2011
The Supreme Court of Kansas recently issued an opinion in Wolfe Electric, Inc. v. Duckworth and Global Cooking Systems, LLC, No. 99,536 (Ka. Oct. 21, 2011), a trade secret misappropriation and restrictive covenant case brought by a manufacturer of conveyor pizza ovens, Wolfe Electric, against its former president, Duckworth, and his new conveyor pizza oven company, Global Cooking Systems.

Co-authors: Peter A. Steinmeyer.

Another instance of alleged trade secret misappropriation results in federal criminal indictment *

USA - October 17 2011
Following up on a recent post, U.S. v. Pu presents another instance of a trade secret theft case with an international component that the federal authorities have decided to prosecute.

Co-authors: David Clark, Peter L. Altieri, Peter A. Steinmeyer.