unfair competition

Subscribe to unfair competition via RSS

Readers of this blog are familiar with our coverage of the various cases involving high tech firms in Silicon Valley such as Google and Adobe involving alleged “no poaching” agreements that they would not solicit each other’s employees for possible employment.  Both the U.S. Government and plaintiff class action attorneys have alleged that such conduct…

It is a truism that preliminary injunctions are “rare” and “exceptional” remedies.  But rarity is context specific.  As a percentage of cars made, Cobra GTs are rare.  If you are standing in the plant where they are made, however, they are anything but rare.  So, while it may well be true that preliminary injunctions, as…

A central issue in all trade secret litigation is the adequacy of a plaintiff’s pre-discovery disclosure of the alleged trade secrets required by California Code of Civil Procedure section 2019.210.  Section 2019.210 provides that a plaintiff suing for misappropriation of trade secrets must identify the alleged trade secrets with “reasonable particularity” before commencing discovery.  The…

Section 16601 of the California Business and Professions Code provides a well-known exception to California’s statutory refusal to enforce contractual commitments not to compete.  Under that section, Courts will enforce “reasonable” restrictions on the seller of a business to engage in competition against the buyer of that business.  This is a commonsense approach: a buyer…

The Cruel Lessons of Wanke, Industrial, Commercial, Residential, Inc. v. Keck  (2012) 209 Cal.App.4th 1151

By:      Charles L. Post

Defendants in trade secret and unfair competition cases often have fewer resources than the plaintiff companies that bring them.  This is often the case in “classic” trade secret misappropriation scenarios: former employees form a new…