Why We Care
Blogs like this (ones that are so focused on a specific area of law) may cause readers to wonder why the authors spend so much time writing about so many different aspects of the topic. For the TSN blog, the reason is that we care. (Nice, huh?) Okay, but why do we care? Simple: the numbers.
In doing some basic "back of the envelope" so-called "research" for a class I teach (Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants at Boston University School of Law), I searched Westlaw to see whether my (and others') suspicion that trade secret/noncompete litigation is on the rise is in fact true - or were we 
only so steeped in those types of cases that our perspective was too skewed to properly perceive reality. The answer? While our perspectives may indeed be skewed, the numbers confirm (in a very - and let me reemphasize - very unscientific way) that trade secret litigation is on the rise. The chart to the right shows that from 2000 to 2009, the number of reported trade secret and/or noncompete cases more than doubled - from 1010 to 2366 - over the last decade.
So, how does that relate to the TSN Blog? The answer is that one of the goals of this blog has been to educate its readers about the issues and how to reverse this trend. Indeed, that was the (I hope) plain goal of the post, "An Ounce of Prevention... ."
All of that to say that the trend toward litigating trade secret/noncompete disputes is real and growing. Accordingly, we urge all of you, our readers, to learn the necessary steps to insulate your trade secrets as much as reasonably possible within your corporate culture, to implement those steps, and to thereby prevent (or at least minimize the effects of) problems before they arise. Will this eliminate all problems and all litigation? No. But, it will put you in the best position to avoid it and, when it can't be avoided, to respond to it quickly and effectively.