Illinois employers planning to protect confidential and proprietary trade secret information through the use of non-compete agreements or non-solicitation agreements need to be aware of amendments to the Illinois Freedom to Work Act that will take effect on January 1, 2022. These changes will institute a number of new requirements designed to restrict the use of non-compete and non-solicitation agreements.
Illinois law currently prohibits employers from requiring that workers earning less than $13 per hour sign non-compete agreements. That threshold is about to change. The law will instead prohibit the use of non-competes with workers earning less than $75,000 annually, and the minimum threshold will increase at various pre-determined dates. The minimum amount will rise to $80,00 per year on January 1, 2027, $85,000 per year on January 1, 2032, and $90,000 per year on January 1, 2037.
Continue Reading Illinois Amends Requirements for Non-Compete Agreements
United Microelectronics Corporation, Inc. (“UMC”), a Taiwanese semiconductor foundry and the world’s fourth largest contract chipmaker, pleaded guilty on October 28, 2020, to criminal trade secret theft, will pay a $60 million fine – the second largest ever in a criminal trade secrets case – and will cooperate in the investigation and prosecution of its co-defendant, a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
Plaintiffs wishing to sue for patent, copyright, or trademark infringement all have one thing in common: they must prove they own the IP at issue. Not so for trade secrets. Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the Pennsylvania Uniform Trade Secrets Act only requires a plaintiff to lawfully possess, rather than formally own, the trade secrets it wishes to vindicate. With this opinion, the Third Circuit affirmed a district court decision awarding $3.5 million in damages and fees to NASA subcontractor Applied Fluid Systems Inc. (“AFS”) in its suit for trade secret misappropriation.
Coronavirus-related emergency measures may limit litigants’ ability to protect trade secrets in state court. State courts are drastically altering their operations in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, including closing courthouses, continuing trials and other deadlines, suspending rules requiring paper filings, and encouraging, if not requiring, telephone and videoconferencing.
On February 13, 2020 the United States filed a sixteen-count superseding 
Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s largest telecommunications company, and CNEX Labs Inc. went to trial this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over dueling allegations of trade secret theft relating to semiconductor chip technology behind solid-state drives. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. et al v. Huang et al, No.
Autonomous vehicle technology, while still young, is already a major catalyst of trade secrets-related litigation. In 2018, Uber settled a lawsuit alleging theft of self-driving technology trade secrets from Waymo (Google’s self-driving car spinoff) for $245 million. With the future of the automotive market (and trillions of dollars) at stake, self-driving technology trade secrets are
The Federal Reserve is prepared to ratchet up the penalty for bankers caught misappropriating their employer’s trade secrets. Although bankers were already subject to civil liability under state laws governing trade secrets and breach of contract, the Federal Reserve now appears willing to subject guilty bankers to an outright ban from working with any institution