Trade secret theft, increasingly through cyber intrusions and hacks, can severely impact a company’s competitiveness and put domestic and international jobs at risk. The reach of trade secret theft into critical commercial and defense technologies, consumer lists and pre-patent processes poses privacy- and national security–related threats as well. Trade secrets protection has become increasingly relevant for companies because of the increased risk of cyber intrusion, the recent implementation of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (which allows statutory trade secrets claims in federal court) and the overall increase in the relevance of trade secrets in the way many global companies do business.
Clients rely on us to help them navigate this complicated terrain. Our lawyers have extensive experience representing companies that seek to protect and enforce their trade secrets and rights in proprietary information in the context of both employment and competition. Likewise, we are regularly called upon to defend companies who are accused of trade secret misappropriation. We have the courtroom acumen, strategic capability and technological experience—more than 120 of our lawyers have scientific and technical backgrounds—to successfully understand the technical issues while strategically managing complex trade secrets cases, and we also have the business experience to resolve litigation in the context of a company’s larger business goals.
Clients in a wide variety of industry sectors, including information and communications technologies, financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and environmental technologies, come to us for counsel on the best ways to guard trade secrets against internal and external theft and for our experience defending against spurious claims. Clients also depend on us to enforce trade secrets that that have been misappropriated by using the variety of criminal laws, state civil laws and recently enacted federal civil laws available to stop further distribution and remedy any damage that has already occurred.
