Employees are at the center of most aspects of trade secrets: Trade secrets cannot exist without the work of employees, cannot be protected without the efforts of employees, and would rarely be compromised or lost without the conduct of employees. This Commentary on Protecting Trade Secrets Throughout The Employment Life Cycle focuses on the inherent potential tensions this creates in the employer-employee relationship. While in most circumstances, employers and employees will be aligned in protecting trade secrets for their mutual benefit at the beginning and during the employment relationship, at the end of the relationship, there is an inherent tension between an employer’s interest in protecting its trade secrets and an employee’s interest in engaging in future employment. This tension is further complicated by the fact that, although the departing employee is at the end of one employment life cycle, he or she typically is simultaneously at the beginning of the next, where the former employer’s risk of loss of its trade secrets corresponds directly to the new employer’s risk of infiltration of those same trade secrets. This Commentary addresses these issues through a chronological view of the employment relationship, from the recruiting and onboarding, to the period of employment, to the offboarding, and back to the onboarding, as follows: Jim Ko Sr. Program Attorney The Sedona Conference [email protected] P.S. Please join us in Denver, Colorado at The Brown Palace Hotel & Spa on May 9-10 for The 2022 Sedona Conference on Trade Secrets, where we will present for public dialogue this and many other published and forthcoming Sedona Working Group 12 on Trade Secrets commentaries. For program page and to register, click here. Please join the dialogue!
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