Is it possible to prevent the misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair business practices here in San Diego and across the State of California?  Protecting your company’s proprietary information (trade secrets) is a strong and defensible business strategy.  The Watkins Firm has more than four decades of experience helping San Diego and California businesses to protect the integrity of their company and the essential elements of their business.

Key Points to Understand how to Prevent the Misappropriation of Trade Secrets and Unfair Business Practices in California

• Every company wants to protect themselves from anyone, internal or external, from taking their business strategies, practices, secrets, and processes and attempting to compete against them.
• Trade secrets are a legally strong and viable strategy for protecting your company’s intellectual property, secrets, sources, processes, software, customers and suppliers, and other proprietary information.
• The threat isn’t always external.  Careful attention to the protection of your company’s trade secrets can protect your business and its profitability.

The Strategies to Protect Your Business Secrets and Inside Knowledge

What are the best strategies to closely guard your business secrets, inside knowledge, and processes?  How does one prevent the misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair business practices in San Diego or anywhere in California? How do you protect the manuals, courses, software, and other materials you’ve developed to train your employees and service providers?

We understand the desire to prevent employees (and former employees), sales people, suppliers, customers, and even business partners and co-owners from using the information you’ve taught them to actively compete against you. Our local and state California courts tend to strictly enforce the misappropriation of trade secrets in California and the abuse of proprietary information.  The Watkins Firm will help you to develop and implement the strategies and supporting documents and contractual agreements to protect the most valuable aspects of your company.

Trade secrets must have their own “independent economic value” that is not publicly known or easily obtained.  They must be specific, genuine, clearly identifiable, and genuinely contribute to or provide a competitive advantage in your marketplace.  Trade secrets must be separated, secured, and clearly marked and identified.  Access to the location or systems containing the information or trade secret(s) must be secured, restricted, locked, encrypted, password protected, and otherwise heavily secured.

How Do You Protect Trade Secrets and Proprietary Information?

The Watkins Firm helps our clients to clearly establish the nature of company trade secrets and proprietary information to help prevent the misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair business practices in San Diego and throughout the State of California.  This work begins prior to hiring, and continues through onboarding and the entire term of employment.  We defend San Diego and Southern California employers and help to update the policies and procedures, employee handbook and internal labeling and space designations which help to protect and enforce trade secrets and proprietary information.

This can include but is not limited to:

• Pricing, Supply Sources, Contract Discounting and Supply Chain Strategies
• Intellectual Property
• Marketing Strategies, Processes, Trade Names, Logos and Presentations
• Technical and Industry Specific Knowledge
• Secret Recipes and Ingredients
• Customer and Supplier Lists
• Correspondence Including Emails and Texts

Your company’s proprietary information also includes the way you conduct business, training and selling tactics and materials.

Pro-Tip: “Theft and embezzlement unfortunately happen a lot.  This definitely extends to trade secrets.  So, what might an unfair business practice include?  In reality, a better question is what would not be considered as an unfair business practice? Because it seems to be in every lawsuit that we defend, you sue someone for sexual harassment, you’re going to get sued for unfair business practices. You sue them for any type of fraud in the business arena, you’re going to sue for unfair business practices. You sue them for unfair competition, misappropriation of trade secrets… There you go.

You’re going to get sued under Business and professions code section seventeen thousand two hundred and seventeen thousand five hundred. And there in between, there are many, many laws talking about what’s unfair and what you can sue for. And it seems to cover everything. It seems to be included in almost all lawsuits, and it has an attorney’s fees clause.

What are some of the basic examples of unfair business practice?  It actually helps to look at it from two perspectives. If you are being sued by like someone you’re dealing directly with and they say, ‘well, what you’re doing is gaining an unfair business advantage over me, you’re violating my rights.’ That’s a direct unfair business practice. If the person across the street is in business and it’s similar to yours and they’re doing things that are affecting your business to their advantage and your detriment, that could be an unfair business practice. So as broad as it is, and as big, and as many large examples as it has, it’s important to see your lawyer at the Watkins Firm.

When you’re in business and you have contracts, this is a big way people get in trouble. They put things in their contracts that are deemed to be an unfair business practice. And those can be anything from how they price, how they pay their employees, how they advertise, how they labeled their products. All those things can turn into unfair business practices and a cause of action. And you’re getting sued.

I would think one of the biggest buckets would be fraud and unethical contact.  It’s pretty widespread. I mean, those are strong words for describing it. I don’t think you have to use unethical, or those are words we use for an actual fraud cause of action in unfair business practices. It’s more of a, ‘what was the effect of your action? Were you accurate in your representations? Did someone detrimentally rely on something you did say or said to their detriment? And were there any other statutory violations that you committed in the context of whatever contractor agreement you have that would make it unfair to whoever you’re dealing with or to your competitors?'” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Prevent the Misappropriation of Trade Secrets in San Diego

The experienced business attorneys at the Watkins Firm help you to prevent the misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair business practices here in San Diego and throughout California.  We will work with you to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to identify and protect your own proprietary information and trade secrets.  We work with our clients to review and update employment agreements, arbitration agreements, policies and procedures, employee handbooks and non-disclosure agreements to ensure they are legal in the State of California, and enforceable.

These strategies and the supporting documentation make it much more difficult for an employee, competitor or former business partner to access the information, take it and work against you in the market.  If they do so, we will have the tools to put an immediate stop to their efforts, seek compensation and hold them accountable.

Learn more about protecting your company and eliminating the theft of proprietary information and misappropriation of trade secrets in San Diego or anywhere in California.  We invite you to review our podcast Episode 25 – Unfair Business Practice Overview as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.