CASE STUDY: TRADE SECRET PROTECTION CASE
The Problem
Our client (“the Company”) was a leading technology services company. While still an employee of our client, a salesman made arrangements to go to work for one of our client’s leading competitors. Before leaving our client’s employ, the salesman loaded Company CRM contact lists, marketing lists, trade secrets and confidential proprietary information, and proprietary Company software and activation keys on to his company-owned laptop and delivered his laptop to his future employer, where all of this data was downloaded. After separating from our client and moving on to the competitor, the salesman began to use this stolen information to our client’s detriment, and to solicit our client’s customers in violation of the terms of the non-solicitation agreement he had signed with our client.
The Solution
We obtained a statement from a former co-worker who had been a witness to the theft perpetrated by the salesman. We then had the Company’s computer systems and the salesman’s laptop examined by a top computer forensics team, which was able to confirm the illicit downloads, and the location to which the data had been downloaded. Rather than rushing to court to obtain a temporary restraining order against the salesman and his new employer, which is a very expensive process, we shared the information we had obtained with the U.S. Attorney’s office, since the activities of the salesman were federal crimes as well as civil wrongs. The FBI investigated the activities of the salesman and the competitor, and the salesman was indicted and arrested. Anxious to distance itself from the disgraced salesman, the competitor agreed to cease and desist all use of the stolen information, avoid contact with our client’s customers, and make a series of cash settlement payments to our client that exceeded our client’s legal costs in pursuing its rights. The salesman was convicted, and sentenced to make financial restitution to our client for the damage he had caused. Our client was thus able to prevent the salesman and the competitor from doing it substantial damage, and more than covered its legal costs in the process.
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