Trade Secrets from South Carolina to Indiana

From Jackson Lewis comes South Carolina Trade Secrets. While the original article reports a new South Carolina case, it appears that South Carolina's trade secrets law is close to Indiana's law. This article makes a point made in a few of my articles on trade secrets (for more articles of mine on trade secrets, please click on the link below that reads "Trade Secrets"):

"Employers seeking to protect proprietary information as trade secrets can take two important points from Atwood. First, employers should consider entering into independently-negotiated confidentiality agreements, supported by valid consideration. Such agreements should be narrowly drawn and specifically define the 'confidential information' that the employer wishes to protect."

Which can work well for new and current employees but does not remove from the employer its duty to protect its trade secrets. As I have been repeating throughout my trade secrets articles on this blog, the original article also makes the following point:

Second, although not at issue in the Atwood case, employers must make reasonable efforts to maintain the secrecy of "trade secrets." Information that an employer desires to protect should be maintained in a manner such that it is available only to those employees with a true "need to know". Where such information is kept in electronic form, as opposed to hard copy, it should be appropriately password-protected and company policies regarding protection of computer systems and passwords should be enforced consistently. To the extent that proprietary information is maintained in hard copy, the employer should implement reasonable security measures designed to limit access and take steps to clearly mark documents as "confidential."

If you have a trade secrets case in Indiana and need a lawyer, please give me a call.