Recipes for top performing food products are among the most jealously guarded business trade secrets in the world. Think secret sauce. Think Coca-Cola®. Think the Kentucky Fried Chicken®. Think Thomas’ English Muffins!
Bimbo Bakeries USA, the owner of Thomas’ English Muffins has sued a former 20 year employee in Pennsylvania, one of only 10 people in the world to whom the famous muffin recipe was entrusted. What did he do? He went to work for a competitor Hostess Brands Inc. and even though he hasn’t actually “stolen” any trade secrets, Bimbo says it’s inevitable that he’ll share his knowledge about the “special nooks and crannies.”
What do you think? Should the bad thing have to happen first? Or should a business be able to nip it in the bud?
Share your opinion below and also join me on February 3 at 8 pm Eastern (5 pm Pacific) for a free teleseminar with attorney Mark Saloman of Proskauer Rose, LLP on Ask the No Nonsense Lawyer when we’ll discuss how to protect your business trade secrets.
Have you heard about Asher B. Edelman? He did a ton of valuable research to help him find the perfect acquisition target. He analyzed their finances, he poured over their business operations and ownership structure and he also retained a company to help him arrange for financing and identify a potential business partner to join him in the acquisition. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Edelman’s research, marked confidential, was shared with the potential business partner on the basis of a hand shake agreement. After reviewing the proposal, the partner decided not to join in Edelman’s venture. Now fast forward six years later. The potential partner of old buys the same acquisition target in an auction and Edelman is not too happy about it. In fact, he was so unhappy that he sued. He claimed the would-be partner improperly used and profited from the information shared years earlier.
The court, however, made Edelman even more unhappy. It didn’t buy his claim for misappropriation of proprietary information. They said he didn’t make sure that the information stayed secret. He didn’t take sufficient precautions. How’s that for a slap in the face?
Your confidential business information and trade secrets are too important to let fall into the Edelman trap.
Find out what you need to do to keep your trade secrets and confidential information protected by joining me on February 3, 2010 at 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific when I interview attorney Mark Saloman on my teleseminar program, Ask the No Nonsense Lawyer. Mark is a member of the Non-Compete & Trade Secret Group at the law firm of Proskauer Rose and an expert on protecting and enforcing business confidentiality. Best of all, the program is free. There is no registration fee.
Don’t wait. You could be leaving your business wide open to trade secret theft and not even know it. Click here now to learn more about this free and informative teleseminar. Space is limited, reserve your spot today.
Making sure your business “family jewels” are protected is one of the best business investments you’ll ever make.
This time the New York garment company who had previously engaged in publicity stunts went too far — they broadcast their poor grasp of legal literacy when they used a photo of a sitting president of the United States in a Times Square billboard ad to hawk their men’s outerwear.
Sure, they contacted the AP photographer who took the photo of President Obama during his visit to the Great Wall of China inBadaling. But according to the Associated Press, licensing the photo still requires obtaining the necessary clearances – in this case getting a model release from the President. (To read the NY Times version of the story click here, the Washington Post version includes a picture of the billboard from a different angle.)
Pleading ignorance of the law, the garmet maker president said:
Is it a calculated risk? Not being an attorney — I’m being, really, a designer, merchandiser guy in the apparel business — I would leave that to attorneys or whatever.
Hmmm, a calculated risk. Sure.
Maybe they should take a hint from Seinfeld’s George Costanza who discovered the hard way why not knowing right from wrong is more than a calculated risk.
Ignorance of the law is a losing defense, so is saying the ad was placed in “good faith.” You’d think that since Women’s Wear Daily, The New York Times, and the New York Post all refused to run a similar ad the company might want to know why. But apparantly they’d rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
In preparing to rule in the recent two week trial that ended between online auction titan eBay and classified ad giant Craigslist, the presiding judge reportedly noted that any ruling he would make would not be a “grand slam home run” for either side.
“I have an uncanny ability to make everyone unhappy,” he said as he was encouraging the parties to reach a mutually acceptable settlement on their own. If they waited for his ruling, in what turned out to be largely a clash of corporate cultures, it would be “the second best way to do it,” he said.
Touché.
The next time around, a little more due diligence up front would help too, because how you conduct business is just as important as what business is conducted. The expectations embodied in corporate culture can make a huge difference between the success and failure of a deal.
