Haynes and Boone's Newsroom
Mission Impossible? Protecting Trade Secrets Posted on the Internet
11/01/2008
Chip Brooker
It is 4:00 p.m. on Friday. You are packing up your laptop computer and some files with hopes of beginning the weekend a few minutes early. The voicemail indicator on your office telephone blinks. Hesitating, you decide to check it. You immediately recognize the voice of your biggest client – the general counsel of Universal Motors Company, a national automotive manufacturer. The voicemail says, “Good afternoon, Mr. Hunt. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the protection of highly-sensitive trade secrets owned by Universal Motors and posted on an Internet message board, without authorization, by a third party. You may select any two associates you need, but it is essential that you utilize all legal options to limit the public disclosure of these trade secrets, remove the trade secrets from the Internet, and maintain their substantial secrecy. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.”1
While dramatizing the dangers that the Internet poses to trade secrets, this fictional scenario also frames the issues analyzed in this article. Will an Internet posting destroy trade secret protection? Will the First Amendment protect innocent third parties who post trade secrets on the Internet? In the future, how can the judiciary and the legislature protect trade secrets from unauthorized disclosure on the Internet? Before analyzing these issues, a basic understanding of trade secret protection in Texas is necessary.
1 See generally Ford Motor Co. v. Lane, 67 F. Supp. 2d 745, 746-49 (E.D. Mich. 1999).
From the Litigation Section of the State Bar of Texas, The Advocate, Winter 2008.
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