It turns out that global climate change is caused by a decrease in the number of pirates. Don’t believe it? See the chart to the right. This is an example of mistaking correlation for causati...
On June 24, 2019, the United States Supreme Court issued its much-awaited decision in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, addressing the intersection of trade secrets law and the Freedom...
Who controls what's in your brain? When a former employee knows his or her former employer’s trade secrets, the former employer may be able to obtain injunctive relief preventing the employee, not...
Updated April 28, 2019 Occasionally, I mention blogs and other resources (and include links) when they are relevant to a topic that I'm discussing and they have reliable information. More ge...
It's been a while since I've had the time to update the Changing Trade Secrets | Noncompete Laws page. Lots has happened in the interim - see below for all of the updates so far this year. I will...
In preparation for the start of my class (I teach Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants at my old law school, Boston University School of Law), I re-ran my chart of reported noncomepte and trade sec...
Back in July, I posted a story about how courts and lawyers frequently assess whether a noncompete is overly broad by asking whether the restriction would prevent the employee from working as a janit...
This is an update to reflect the adoption by Massachusetts of its own version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. The background: Until now, every state but Massachusetts and New York had ado...
Governor Baker just signed the noncompete and trade secrets bills. They are now law. Here is what you need to know: Massachusetts noncompete and trade secret reform has arrived: What you need to k...
Last week, I posted an article explaining the new noncompete and trade secrets law reform legislation passed by the Massachusetts Legislature. See Massachusetts noncompete and trade secret reform ha...
Almost a decade in the making, the Massachusetts legislature has today (July 31 - at 11:57 PM) finally passed noncompete reform. Unheralded, however, is the companion updating of Massachusetts trade s...
Despite the lack of headlines, the Massachusetts Legislature has continued to move closer and closer toward noncompete and trade secret reform. It now looks potentially imminent. On January 23, 201...
Yesterday, I posted about the bills to ban noncompetes at the federal level: Federal Legislators Propose Noncompete Ban. Only the House bill was available on line; the Senate bill was not. Whil...
On April 26, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the Workforce Mobility Act to impose a federal ban on the use of employee noncompetes. A compan...
On Tuesday, April 17, the Massachusetts legislature's Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development favorably reported H.4419 to the House Steering, Policy and Scheduling. The new bill - w...
Proposed legislation banning noncompetes has become de rigueur. Two more states - Vermont and New Hampshire - have introduced noncompete bills in just the past two weeks. Vermont's bill would ban a...
Today, the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development held a hearing on the 8 bills involving noncompetes or trade secrets currently pending at the State House. As many of you w...
In preparation for an upcoming discussion of trade secrets law for PLI in San Francisco (Trade Secrets 2017: What Every Lawyer Should Know), I reran my chart of noncomepte and trade secrets decisions....
It turns out that I missed a few bills! New York: Two identical bills (one in the Assembly (A 6419) and one in the Senate (S 4688)) to adopt the Uniform Trade Secrets Act; and one (S 1204) that...
For those following noncompete and trade secrets legislative activity around the country, I just updated our Changing Trade Secrets | Noncompete Laws page. (This is a never-ending task with so many s...
Almost nine years in the making, Massachusetts is on the cusp of noncompete reform. And, decades in the making (yes, decades, thanks to Steve Chow's extraordinary efforts), Massachusetts is also...
This is an update to reflect statutory revisions to Texas' version of its Uniform Trade Secrets Act statute, which will become effective on September 1. For more on the changes, see Texas Updates I...
Two important reports on trade secrets protection were recently issued: one by Baker McKenzie and Euromoney Institutional Investor Thought Leadership and the other by the Office of the Intellectual...
Noncompete agreements have for about a decade been the focus of legislative efforts around the country. Some states seek to strengthen enforcement of them, while others seek to scale them back or elim...