If you are a successful small business, part of your success may be due to your use of proprietary techniques, processes or information your competitors do not have. Protecting this information is vital to maintaining your competitive edge and ensuring your continued success. Yet every day, employees, contractors or consultants attempt to take a business’s proprietary information and trade secrets to start their own competing business. The ease with which one can copy, transfer and disseminate huge amounts of data has greatly increased the risk that your trade secrets may be stolen.
It is essential to enact a plan to protect your valuable trade secrets from unauthorized disclosure and theft. By following some of the guidelines below, you can decrease the risk of theft by an unfaithful employee or third party, while improving the likelihood that a court will provide you with a remedy in the event of theft.
In New York, a trade secret is defined as any formula, pattern, device or compilation of information that is used in one’s business and that gives the owner a competitive advantage over competitors who do not know or use it. The trade secret may be central to the business, such as the source code for software, or a unique manufacturing process, or it may be ancillary information that gives the business a competitive edge over its competitors, such as customer lists, pricing data, or confidential supply sources.
Upon termination of employment, require employees to certify in writing that they do not have any of the company’s trade secrets or confidential information in their possession, and to acknowledge their continuing duty to maintain the confidentiality of the company’s trade secrets even after their termination.
This website contains attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The information on this website is for general information purposes only. Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt or viewing does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship.
© 2002-2024 Frank J. Monteleone. All Rights Reserved