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Porter Wright Morris & Arthur has more than 250 lawyers in six offices located in Ohio, Florida and Washington, D.C.Quitting a job and filling your pockets with CDs containing marketing strategies, plans for future services or confidential client lists to use in your own business or to give a new employer is almost always illegal. But what about when the employee simply remembers some or all of these things?
Ohio just recently joined a majority of states where "a trade secret is a trade secret regardless of whether it is memorized or in a more tangible form," the law firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur wrote in a recent law alert. While the state Supreme Court ruling applies only to Ohio, the issues raised by the decision should be of concern to all employers -- those worried about protecting business secrets and those that want to ensure they are not violating the law when they hire workers with knowledge of competitors.
The specific case involved an ex-employee who solicited work from clients of his former employer whose information he had memorized. Porter Wright warns that though the court ruled against the employee and clarified the "rather unremarkable notion" that memorized trade secrets are protected, the decision also muddied up some related issues. For example, the ruling stated that not all "casual" memories can be regarded as trade secrets but offered no guidance as to when a memory is casual. "Will hiring employers now face the risk of trade secret liability simply by allowing prospective employees to recount their work with specific clients?" the law firm asks.
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