Secrets Exposed: Trade Secrets, Trust, And A Multi-Million Dollar Lesson

At the beginning of the pandemic, concerns were raised that trade secret misappropriation might take a new form. Indeed, with large swaths of the workforce working from home, spouses, roommates, or others living in the same area had an increased opportunity to purloin confidential information that might not have been available to them previously.

But a recent case in Massachusetts highlights that this is not unique to pandemic-era work-from-home setups. While the events forming the basis of the dispute in BioPoint, Inc. v. Dickhaut et al. occurred during the pandemic, the facts reveal that information sharing between employees of competitors can happen even in traditional settings.