In non-compete and trade secret lawsuits, corporate plaintiffs frequently allege that the defendant had or has access to their “customer list”, and that this customer list is top secret and incalculably valuable. In most cases, assertions about customer lists and customer information being trade secrets, confidential, and/or proprietary are absurd. Often, the customers at issue are companies, all of which are well known. The customers and their contact information can easily be identified by any literate person with access to Google. The problem is that case law has not kept pace with the realities of the modern world. There is case law in the non-compete and trade secret context from 20, 30, 40+ years ago that is treated as authoritative and precedent--- but many such decisions were based on vastly different facts and market realities. Just because a list of customers may have been a trade secret at some point in the past does not mean it’s a trade secret today. Particularly where those customers are companies.
0 Comments