Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing, and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series in which we introduce a variety of topics that looks to educate and deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. To that end, this blog is Part XII of our ongoing series on “Life Sciences Industry Guide for Labor and Employment,” in which we review the basics and issues of concern to employers engaged within the life sciences industry. In Part XI of the series and our blog titled “Trade Secret Protection & Restrictive Covenants in Life Sciences,” we mentioned that the life sciences industry is highly interconnected and, therefore, fosters outsourcing arrangements, joint ventures, and collaborations between facilities and organizations, which, consequently, imply that employees are in constant mobility. We also added that, as a result, these organizations and companies must understand how to defend against trade secret theft claims and take the necessary precautions to protect their confidential information and trade secrets. For instance, this is particularly crucial to employers in fields like testing services, which are characterized by the less common use of patent protection.

As a continuation of our discussion, this blog is titled “Trade Secret Protection & Restrictive Covenants in Life Sciences” and is an overview of issues employers within the life sciences industry should consider when dealing with trainees, volunteers, and interns.

Employer Best Practices for Protecting & Maintaining Secrecy of Trade Secrets

In our previous blog, we mentioned that employers are responsible for taking and making reasonable measures and efforts to protect their trade secrets and maintain the secret status of the same. As one would expect, a trade secret becomes a lost asset once it is disclosed and/or used by someone who should not have. In this blog, we provide you with a few best practices and measures that employers may take in protecting their trade secrets and curbing any potential instance of misappropriation. These security measures include, but are not limited to, ensuring that:

  • Information considered proprietary is indicated and notified– employees entrusted with handling trade secrets should be notified that such information is proprietary and should not, without express consent and permission, disclosed or, otherwise, used for other purposes other than the owners’. Accordingly, documents holding such information should be stamped as “secret” or “confidential.”
  • Non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements have been completed by recipients of trade secrets – employers should require recipients of trade secrets to fill and complete non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements.
  • Exit interviews have been performed – employers should conduct exit interviews on departing individuals. Before the final exit, the employee should, in writing, acknowledge and agree to the obligation of ensuring the confidentiality and secrecy of trade secrets.
  • The access of employees to sensitive information has been limited– the access of employees to sensitive information should be limited by using a one-time password and granting access on a ‘need to know’ basis.
  • Data security measures have been instituted and implemented– in addition to making sure that individuals responsible for the maintenance of sensitive information have been trained, appropriate data security measures should be implemented.
  • Physical security measures have been maintained – necessary physical security features such as “Authorized Personnel Only” signage, security cameras, after-hours security personnel, keypad authorization, and alarms, among others, should be used in facilities where sensitive information is kept.
  • Formal policies on the use, against misuse, and maintaining the confidentiality of trade secrets have been created – in addition to providing appropriate training on matters such as inadvertent disclosure, formal policies regarding how to maintain, control the use, and/or against the misuse of trade secrets should be established and implemented.

In Part XIII of this series and our blog titled “Understanding Restrictive Measures in the Life Sciences Industry,” we shall move the discussion forward by providing you with an overview of issues surrounding restrictive covenants within the life sciences industry.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.