How In-House Counsel Can Protect Trade Secrets

As bring-your-own device policies proliferate and digital storage becomes cheaper and more prevalent, it gets easier to pilfer trade secrets. Whether intentional or unintentional, it can involve the transfer of trade secrets in either direction – in or out. This Today’s General Counsel article discusses the most common scenarios, and suggests some best practices for avoiding them. At the outset, understanding what constitutes a trade secret and what doesn’t is key. So too are extensive on-boarding and off-boarding procedures – in-depth one-on-one conversations with both new hires and employees who are leaving the company. One specific recommendation: When an employee with access to proprietary information leaves the company, don’t, on the grounds of economy, automatically wipe and re-use that employee’s work computer – or, if you do it, then first create and archive a proper forensic image of the computer’s drive.