The Defend Trade Secrets Act ("DTSA"), signed into law
last year by President Obama, revolutionized intellectual property
law by creating a new civil cause of action permitting trade secret
owners to sue for misappropriation in federal court under federal
law. Prior to the DTSA, trade secret owners had to rely on
state law to remedy misappropriation or to enjoin former employees
without non-compete agreements from going to work for a competitor
simply because of the confidential information they learned or had
access to during the course of their employment.
One of the primary goals of the DTSA was to establish a uniform
law of trade secret misappropriation. The DTSA expressly did
not, however, preempt existing state law, which is anything but
uniform on whether the inevitable disclosure doctrine can be used
to obtain an injunction to prevent employees from changing jobs in
the absence of concrete evidence of actual or threatened use of
stolen trade secrets. Early
