Businesses invest significant time and resources toward creating
and maintaining customer lists. While customer lists were
historically relatively simple and straight-forward documents
listing customer names and contacts, companies today often use
customer relationship management (CRM) tools to compile, organize,
and analyze large amounts of customer data – including
contact information, personal information, products, marketing
materials, social media information, purchase history, buying
preferences, and more. Such data can be crucial for maintaining
current customer relationships and soliciting prospective business
relationships. For this reason, customer lists are more and more
frequently being deemed a significant intellectual property.
Likewise, should such intellectual property fall into the wrong
hands, it can be very damaging to the business. So what steps can
businesses take to protect their valuable customer lists? This
article discusses recent case law on
