Protecting Your Company's Secrets Keep the lid on your confidential information.

When employees leave your company to work for a competitor, make sure they don't take your competitive edge with them. The law protects trade secrets, but only if employees understand the information is confidential.

Consider a recent Illinois case, Liebert Corp. v. Mazur. Four sales representatives resigned from a company to accept positions with a competitor. Just before leaving, one of the reps downloaded huge quantities of company data. The ex-employees were sued.

The court ruled that the downloaded customer lists and sales quotes were not trade secrets protected by law because the company did not adequately protect them. The court was "troubled by [the company's] failure to either require employees to sign confidentiality agreements, advise employees that its records were confidential, or label the information as confidential."