“In his 37-page opinion in Bimbo Bakeries USA Inc. v. Botticella, U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick granted a preliminary injunction, ruling that Chris Botticella, a former senior vice president at Bimbo, cannot start to work for Hostess Inc.
An inevitable disclosure case recently filed in federal court in Pennsylvania. To prevent disclosure of its trade secrets, Bimbo Bakeries asked a judge to keep the former manager from working for a competitor. Although, he had not even signed a noncompete.
Discussion of the evolution of common law doctrines which erode employee bargaining power and freedom.
In Southwest Stainless, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that although pricing generally may be protectable, a court needs look at the specific pricing at issue in the case to determine whether the company protected that pricing. Ultimately, the Court in Southwest Stainless held that sharing pricing with a customer, without restriction, removes any claim of confidentiality that may have existed.
Conceptually, there is something disturbing about creating a rule out of thin air that an employer loading its information onto…
The doctrine of inevitable disclosure represents another phase in the evolution of the common law’s permissive attitude toward covenants not to compete, since the doctrine permits a court to prohibit an employee from competing with his former employer even in the absence of any contract.
In many non-compete cases, the issue arises as to whether the employer has fulfilled all of its contractual obligations under an employment agreement, and if not, the employee can use this “unclean hands” defense in an action to enforce a non-compete agreement.
It has been a while since I posted. Will save the excuses, but thought I would take this opportunity to…
On August 2oth, 2009, the South Carolina Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Milliken & Co. v. Morin. The…
A recurring issue in my practice is whether information known by a former employee is a “trade secret.” Many times the information at issue is a client list or simply the identify of clients and/or customers. The South Carolina Supreme Court considered this issue in the case of Atwood Agency v. Black, 374 S.C. 68, 646 S.E.2d 882 (S.C. 2007).