Wagman Hurwitz helps clients identify when they have trade secret information and develop procedures and contracts enabling them to keep it secret. The bottom line for trade secrets is that confidentiality agreements will not turn criminals into law-abiding citizens. You need to do reference checks and get comfortable with the people with whom you intend to share your information—before you rely on a legal document to keep your information secret.

If you have trade secret information you must keep it secret to get the protection of the law. Attorneys’ ethics (there actually are extensive rules on attorney ethics) require attorneys to keep clients’ secrets, but most people are not burdened by this obligation. If you’ve developed the 75-mile per gallon gasoline engine, you need to be careful about sharing it with the wrong people. We’ve seen a trade secret case lost because the defendant was able to prove that the supposed “secret recipe” had been posted on a bulletin board on the factory floor, with no limits on who had access to the information. The plaintiff’s case fell apart when the defendant introduced a photo of a birthday celebration. In the background you could see the “secret recipe” pinned to the bulletin board.