A company’s trademarked materials, copyrighted information, and competitively valuable
trade secrets need to be protected and closely watched. Otherwise, a crafty or disgruntled
employee might try to steal away with the information for their own profit,
or the benefit of a competitor, which is arguably worse. Such was the
case in a recent trade secret litigation case MKT Law and our Minneapolis
business lawyers managed.
A sale representative for an equipment supply company – we can call
them Company X to uphold privacy in this matter –
copied trade secrets before resigning in the early hours of a Monday morning. Later that same
day, this sales representative went to go work in his former sales territory
for another company – Competitor Y – that directly competed
with Company X. This was a serious problem, but MKT Law had the solution.
You Can Get a New Job, Just Not Here
We obtained an injunction that prohibited the former employee from working
in the seven-county metro area under the
non-compete, non-disclosure, and non-solicitation agreement that was signed by the very same employee two years earlier. However,
the non-compete agreement was overly-broad and was purported to restrict
related employment for a large section of the country. In order to increase
its validity in court, MKT Law narrowed the geographic scope it covered
proactively in the motion for a temporary injunction that was filed a
few days after the sale representative’s abrupt and unannounced
decision to quit from Company X.
Injunctions, E-Mails & Appeals
MKT Law immediately had our client, Company X, provide a copy of the former
employee’s email account that was linked to the company’s
servers and data. We found an e-mail – this time the “e”
in e-mail stands for “evidence” — that showed the former
employee had already referred one of Company X’s clients to Competitor
Y, even before quitting. Subsequent investigations found that the employee
had also taken a large amount of bidding and contract information with
him, which had been downloaded from the company’s industry-standard
estimating program. The employee took that downloaded information, which
was clearly considered a trade secret, to his new employer, Competitor
Y, and even went as far as to upload the stolen data to a computer in
his new employer’s office.
After MKT Law filed its lawsuit and obtained the temporary injunction,
the former employee appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals while the
case was proceeded through discovery process. After filing a responsive
brief with the appellate court that argued the trial court indeed properly
granted the temporary injunction, the court of appeals eventually issued
its decision and affirmed the legal validity and necessity of the temporary
injunction. In the meantime, with all of the electronically stored evidence
in hand, MKT Law was able to keep the temporary injunction in place for
longer than a year while the case proceeded to trial stages.
The eve before the trial was to take place, seeing the legal strength of
the case that that MKT Law had built, the case was settled in favor of
our client, Company X. A favorable settlement from Competitor Y and the
former sales representative – who had since been fired by Competitor
Y – was given to our client. While the settlement was beneficial
and appreciated, the most important part of this case result is the prevention
of the former employee’s attempts to sell for a competitor in the
same sales territory he had for over a year, and that the company’s
business in that major metropolitan area market was preserved.
MKT Law is a reputable business litigation law firm headquartered in Minneapolis
and serving clients all throughout the region, from St. Paul to Plymouth
to Bloomington and more. Our lead attorney, Mr. Mark K. Thompson, has nearly 20 years of business law experience under his belt and a strong
backing of positive client testimonials. If you need legal representation of this caliber for a business law issue or contract dispute
of your own, you can request a confidential case review
today.