We are pleased to announce the webinar "Trade Secret Audits: You Can't Protect What You Don't Know You Have" is now available as a webinar recording.
In Seyfarth's ninth installment in the 2016 Trade Secrets Webinar Series, attorneys Robert Milligan, Eric Barton, and Scott Atkinson focused on trade secret audits. It is not uncommon for companies to find themselves in situations where important assets are overlooked or taken for granted. Yet, those same assets can be lost or compromised in a moment through what is often benign neglect. Experience has shown that companies gain tremendous value by taking a proactive, systematic approach to assessing and protecting their trade secret portfolios through a trade secret audit.
As a conclusion to this well-received webinar, we compiled a summary of three takeaways that were discussed during the webinar:
- As part of any trade secret audit, confidentiality agreements should be updated to include the new immunity language required by the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) to preserve the company's right to exemplary damages and attorney's fees under the DTSA.
- A trade secret audit, and the resulting protection plan, should have three primary goals:
(1) Ensure that a company's trade secrets are adequately identified and protected from disclosure;
(2) Ensure that a company has taken adequate steps to protect itself in litigation if a trade secret is misappropriated; and
(3) Limit the risk of exposure to other companies' claims of trade secret misappropriation.
- As part of a trade secret audit, onboarding and off-boarding procedures are evaluated to ensure that the intellectual property rights of third parties and the company are respected.
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