How do I protect my company’s IP from employee disclosure risk?

Text Transcript

Stuart Gutwein, Business Law Attorney: If your business manufactures parts for the automotive industry, you probably cannot restrict your employees from competing in a business that’s not automotive. If they want to go manufacture for the construction industry, even though it may be similar parts, it serves a different industry. So we just need to be careful in those two areas: one, the geographic scope of the business; and two, the business scope of the non-competition agreement.

The other area that you should consider for your company in protecting your intellectual property is trade secret training for your employees. First, employees need to know what trade secrets are. Second, they need to know what they should never disclose to a third party. Third, they should know who they should talk to in case they have a question. If that’s the general counsel, then they need to talk to the general counsel. If there’s not a general counsel, then who should they talk to? There should be a designated person.

And fourth, you should get training for your employees so that they know when to disclose their ideas to someone in the company, when they should have a third party sign a confidentiality agreement, or if they think there’s been a breach of the company’s confidential information, what steps they should take.