The New Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA): An Employer’s Guide

The new Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA)  is designed to create a federal standard for trade secret protection – and includes remedies that permit federal judicial seizure of stolen trade secrets.  DTSA fills an important gap in the statutory framework that employers have available to them to retrieve trade secrets stolen by departing employees, such as the  CFAA (.pdf), the Economic Espionage Act and the patchwork of state trade secret laws (.pdf).

Here is what employment lawyers need to know and do now:

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See you at Hofstra Law!

Looking forward to speaking at Hofstra Law’s Labor & Employment Law Journal’s “Spring 2016 Symposium: Technology in the Workplace.”    I am joining a very impressive panel on Cyber Security and Electronic Employment Records.   I will be talking about the need for employment lawyers to be active participants in cybersecurity-related discussions — and to share some thoughts on how to do so.

The program is Friday, April, 15 2016 | 9 a.m.-3 p.m.   Details follow.

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Holacracy, Zappos and Employment Law (LMFTFY)

Holacracy is a non-hierarchical management philosophy that is getting a lot of attention these days.  As readers might know, Zappos recently adopted this ideology, famously eliminating bosses and job titles.  Although not strictly a technology, it has been called a social technology; more relevantly for this blog, it is a model used by a number of technologically-fueled enterprises.

Editor’s note 6/22: see also Kate Bischoff‘s excellent piece from 6/5/15: The Law Isn’t Trendy.

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FTC: Employment Law #Gamechanger?

The Federal Trade Commission is deeply involved in the intersection of emerging technology and the employer-employee relationship.  Two such areas merit a closer look: social media endorsements and cybersecurity.  (I have previously written about the FTC on the subjects of big data and IoT in the workplace).

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Robots and Legal Skepticism

When it comes to employment law, I am a robot skeptic.  That is, I think employment lawyers ought not worry too much about robotics.

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Anticipatory Disruption and Risk Management

After delivering a recent presentation on disruptive technology in the workplace, my co-panelists and I were asked: what exactly do we mean by the overused word “disruptive?”

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Employment Law Risk and Early-Round Investors

A recent program sponsored by Epstein Becker & Green — Moving to the Next Level: Valuation & Financing Considerations and Employment Strategies for Start-Ups and Emerging Technology Companies — tackled finance and employment law (and their interplay) as they relate to tech start-ups.  The program covered a range of interesting and important issues.

I took away three key questions I would ask early-round investors.

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