Armstrong Teasdale’s Noncompete and Trade Secrets practice area is known for aggressively, and successfully, representing clients in cases that often involve high-stakes litigation. Trade secrets and other confidential business information are some of a company’s most valuable assets. We have won or avoided many temporary restraining orders (TROs) and many preliminary injunctions in numerous U.S. state and federal courts for clients in over 100 industries. In addition, our lawyers have written award-winning articles on noncompete and trade secret litigation that have been cited by the courts.
We protect clients from unfair competition by implementing safeguards to protect critical assets, and by pursuing effective litigation strategies. We have decades of experience handling a diverse array of noncompete, trade secrets and unfair competition cases.
When employees leave to work for a competing business, they may take sensitive company data, or solicit and divert customers and co-workers from their former employer to follow them to the competing business. In these instances, time is often of the essence to stop the dissemination of data or loss of business. Our lawyers are skilled at quickly counseling clients and moving swiftly to obtain immediate injunctive relief through temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, as well as permanent injunctions.
In addition, when a prospective employee has signed a nonsolicit or noncompete agreement with a prior employer, we assist employers in navigating the risks of hiring them and provide advice as to the enforceability of the agreements. We also represent employees who are sued for violating such agreements, as well as employers who are sued for interfering with noncompete agreements that an employee signed with a prior employer.
We also help clients maintain critical evidence by recovering deleted files, browser history and document routing that can be used to pursue legal action.
The experience and knowledge of our noncompete and trade secrets lawyers are further augmented by the firm’s Intellectual Property Litigation practice area, which has extensive experience in trade secret misappropriation litigation, as well as other contested intellectual property matters such as patent, copyright, trademark and design right infringements. Together, they provide clients with extensive trial experience and technical ability in pursuing injunctive relief and recovering damages for theft of trade secrets, as well as defending clients against claims of misappropriation.
Proprietary information can also be placed at risk due to data breach, whether malicious or unintended. Our noncompete lawyers work closely with professionals in the Privacy and Data Security practice area to provide guidance on establishing policies and practices before a trade secret theft or data breach occurs, as well as formulating responses following a breach. These policies and practices apply not only to a client company and its employees, but also to vendors and third parties to ensure sensitive information remains secure throughout the supply chain. We accomplish this through measures including data security audits, development and implementation of customer, employee and data privacy policies and practices, document retention policies and employee training programs.