Another Employee Misappropriation Suit – Agilent Sues Advanced Materials
TradingMarkets.com is reporting that Agilent Technologies, Inc. is suing Advanced Materials Technology Inc. in Delaware for breach of confidentiality agreements, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of fiduciary duties relating to its high-performance liquid chromatography or HPLC technology, whatever that is. Agilent alleges that three employees of Advanced, formerly of Agilent, took Agilent trade secrets and confidential information and used it for the benefit of Advanced in developing its Halo HPLC. The story is here.
Do you notice a trend with these cases? Bonus points if you said that most of them relate to former employees leaving for another company and using their former company’s trade secrets and confidential information to compete unfairly.
These cases all have one thing in common–they will turn on the strength of the plaintiff’s trade secrets protection plan. A strong plan that is effectively implemented will generally allow recovery, while on the other hand, companies with no plans, or companies who don’t effectively implement their protection plans will generally be denied recovery.
We will follow this case as it develops to analyze the strength of Agilent’s trade secrets protection plan and its implementation.
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The Trade Secrets Blog is published by Benjamin C. Johnson, Esq.
Mr. Johnson is an attorney at the Boesch Law Group, a Santa Monica, California law firm noted for receiving the “Number 1 Judgment in the Nation” according to US Lawyers Weekly. You can visit the website at www.boeschlawgroup.com for more information.
Mr. Johnson focuses his practice on trade secrets litigation and closely follows new developments in the law as they pertain to the field of trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks and patents.
If you are involved in trade secret litigation or would like to improve your trade secret protection strategies, please contact Mr. Johnson for a free consultation.
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Agilent is trying to smear a legendary scientist in order to legally steal a product. Their HPLC technology for instruments has done well, but they have not developed a consumable product in over five years.
This is a case of a large corporation trying to muscle a small company that has invented a new consumable technoloy.
Follow this case as it develops and you will see Agilents case has no merit.