In non-compete and trade secret litigation, key evidence of
employee misconduct often comes to light through a forensic
examination of the employee's devices and accounts. These
forensic reviews can identify suspicious activity, such as an
employee forwarding information and documents to a personal email
address, accessing large amounts of company files around the time
of the employee's resignation, or attaching flash drives and
other external devices that may be used to misappropriate company
files.
However, now that many companies have their employees working
from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, employee actions
that were typically considered "smoking guns" in the
context of non-compete and trade secret litigation now could
regularly be occurring in the work-from-home environment. It is not
unusual to hear about employees working from home who have
forwarded documents to their personal email accounts to print them
from a home office printer, or who
