Locke Lord’s Richard Reibstein, Jeffrey Kramer and Christopher Fontenelli (New York and Newark) came together when a portfolio company for a private equity company discovered a misappropriation of trade secrets by a departing employee at the portfolio company’s South Jersey headquarters. Locke Lord filed a lawsuit on behalf of the portfolio company in a New Jersey federal court for violation of the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and New Jersey Trade Secrets Act, along with a claim for breach of the employee’s duty of loyalty and breach of the employer's proprietary information agreement. The client secured a temporary restraining order on consent including an order permitting a forensic analysis of the departing employee’s electronic devices, which provided evidence of further misappropriation. After the Locke Lord team supplemented their court papers with the results of the forensics, the former employee consented to a preliminary injunction. Thereafter, the team secured a Permanent Injunction Order on consent, including provisions that the former employee will pay a portion of the private equity company’s legal fees and substantial liquidated damages or actual losses and attorneys’ fees in the event of a violation of the permanent injunction. It also requires the former employee and his new company, a competitor of the portfolio company, to provide sworn declarations of non-use and non-disclosure of the client’s trade secrets.
Posted on April 25, 2022