If someone else has misappropriated trade secrets, it generally means that they have obtained or used them in an illegal manner. Perhaps they bribed someone to discover the secrets or they stole the information from a source they weren’t supposed to have access to. Maybe they simply gave trade secrets that they had been told about to the competition, or they left your business to start their own. No matter how it happened, your company has lost control of those trade secrets and it has caused financial hardship.
This can often lead to a court case but be warned that it is fairly complex on many levels. One thing you have to think about is the fact that those trade secrets are only valuable when they’re not in the public record and they’re not information that anyone else can discover or use. At the same time, going through a court case may mean that you need to identify exactly what information you’ve started the case about.
This means that you have to be very careful to balance the two ends. You must identify the information properly so that you can show how it was misappropriated, but you don’t want to accidentally put that information into the public eye and make it useless to your company after the case.
So what can you do?
You can certainly go to court for a case like this. You just have to be careful about exactly what you say and how you approach the situation. But there are also often options that you can utilize before it turns into litigation. You may be able to find a solution that will not put the information on the public record.
As you do this, it’s important to carefully consider all of the options that you have. You need to protect your trade secrets, of course, but you don’t want to do anything that accidentally compromises them. Be sure you understand the solutions that will work best in your situation.