Keep Up with Current Employment Law Issues

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (the “DTSA”) is a federal statutory vehicle that companies can use to try to protect their most valuable assets (along with their employees, hopefully) — their trade secrets. Since the DTSA is only slightly more than a year old, there have been relatively few federal court decisions addressing the scope and breadth of the statute. One such case decided this summer in the Northern District of Illinois, Cortz, Inc. v. Doheny Enterprises, Inc., 2017 WL 2958071 (N.D. Ill. 2017), sheds light on the type of information afforded protection under the DTSA. The decision also offers insight as to how a plaintiff can improve its chances of securing a preliminary injunction at a misappropriation hearing under the DTSA as well as under state law and how a company defendant can attempt to defeat that motion.

A question that is or should be important to employers and employees alike is whether non-compete provisions in an employment agreement can be enforced in New York when the employee is terminated involuntarily without cause. As is well known, the law regarding restrictive covenant provisions such as non-competes is a matter of state law. Although disfavored in the typical employment context under New York law on the grounds that they interfere with a person’s right to earn a living, non-compete provisions are enforced if the terms are:

1. no greater than required to protect an employer’s legitimate protectable interests and
2. reasonable in temporal and geographic scope.

See Johnson Controls, Inc. v. A.P.T. Critical Sys. Inc., 323 F.Supp. 2d 525,533 (S.D.N.Y. 2004).

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In New York, a promise of good faith and fair dealing is implicit in every contract. 511 W. 232nd CORP v. Jennifer Realty Co., 98 N.Y.2d 144, 153 (2002); Smith v. General Acc. Inc. Co., 91 N.Y.2d 648, 652-653 (1998); Dalton v. Educational Testing Serv., 87 N.Y.2d 384, 389 (1995) A contract is breached when a party acts in a manner that deprives the other party of the right to receive the benefits to which it is entitled under the agreement even if such action is not expressly forbidden by any contractual provision. The implied covenant protects the reasonable expectations of each party arising out of the written agreement it entered into. Jennifer Realty Co., 98 N.Y.2d 144, 153; accord M/A-COM Sec. Corp. v. Galesi, 904 F.2d 134, 136 (2d Cir. 1990). 

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