Trade Secrets

Our experience and multidisciplinary approach enable us to provide clients with end-to-end solutions to protect and enforce their trade secrets, as well as defend against claims of trade secret misappropriation. Our services address all points on the trade secret spectrum — audits, compliance, incident response, litigation and government investigations. We tailor comprehensive client-specific strategies to protect innovation, develop or strengthen information security protocols, and quickly respond to trade secret threats to minimize risk or damage. The former government prosecutors on our team can add leverage by working in tandem with law enforcement agencies responding to trade secret incidents.

With subject matter leads from across our full-service firm, our team reflects the business reality that trade secret protection implicates multiple organizational functions, from human resources, to information technology and security, to sales, engineering and legal, among others.

We understand that while trade secret protection is critical in virtually every sector, internal systems and processes, job titles and functions, and technologies and innovations differ across industries and impact the protection of proprietary information and offensive and defensive strategies related to misappropriated information. Central to our team strategy, we follow an industry-focused approach allowing us to see trade secrets issues holistically, accounting for trends and best practices. We customize our services to each client’s needs, goals and industry.

Audit and Compliance Programs

Our team assists clients in conducting trade secret assessments and internal reviews to enhance their trade secret protection.

We audit trade secret protection programs to assess risk factors, devise and strengthen policies and processes, and establish frameworks for continually protecting proprietary information. McGuireWoods’ breadth of experience and technical knowledge allow us to efficiently identify areas of vulnerability, implement effective policies and procedures, draft enforceable noncompete agreements and other restrictive covenants, and advise on the best modes to protect intellectual property.

We provide a broad range of services:

Employment Policies, Procedures and Agreements. Protecting trade secrets is an integral part of effective and comprehensive employee relations. We evaluate a client’s policies, procedures and related agreements to ensure trade secrets and other proprietary and confidential information are protected during employment and after termination. This includes preparing, reviewing and negotiating employment agreements, restrictive covenant and confidentiality agreements, policies and procedures to protect client information and data, and auditing compliance procedures to ensure employees take the necessary steps to protect information.

Intellectual Property. The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and evolving jurisprudence on patent-eligible subject matter have changed how companies approach protecting and enforcing intellectual property. We understand the implications of patent procurement and trade secret protection, and guide clients through the risks and rewards of each in their particular lines of business to develop comprehensive innovation protection strategies.

Data Privacy and Security. Data protection issues affect every aspect of an organization's information management life cycle. We ensure policies and procedures are designed to minimize nefarious and inadvertent misappropriation of trade secrets and proprietary information. We review and advise on information and records management policies, vendor contracts, data retention policies, data destruction policies and procedures, privacy and social media policies, and website terms of use, among others.

Litigation, Investigations and Incident Response

McGuireWoods helps clients protect themselves from domestic and international trade secret threats, and create comprehensive response strategies to minimize imminent risks on an expedited basis, such as cybersecurity breaches and trade secret theft.

Our trade secret litigation team includes trial lawyers with extensive experience prosecuting and defending bet-the-company trade secret matters and they have won some of the nation’s most high-profile trade secret matters. Our trade secret litigators dedicate their practices to this area of the law.

Trade secret litigation involves imminent risk and unquantifiable damages that necessitate nearly instantaneous action. McGuireWoods’ robust team of trial lawyers focuses on prosecuting and defending these hypertechnical, high-pressure disputes. Our lawyers excel at handling the extraordinary rigors of these cases, which often require expedited injunctions and/or trial settings.

The former state and federal prosecutors on our team afford clients greater protection by working with government law enforcement agencies, such as the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Government involvement provides invaluable leverage necessary to resolve trade secret disputes, particularly when they implicate sovereigns or foreign citizens or entities.

Our former prosecutors draw on experience responding to cybersecurity risks. We further leverage our firm’s government investigations and data privacy and security prowess to ensure the regulatory aspects of litigation are incorporated into our services.

We understand that protracted litigation is not appropriate for all disputes and does not always best serve clients’ needs. We pride ourselves on devising litigation strategies that meet clients’ objectives in an efficient and cost-effective manner. While our deep bench of trade secret lawyers gives us the capacity to outpace the opposition, we temper our approach to implement the strategies that will advance clients’ business interests and objectives.