New Ways to Protect Trade Secrets

Workforce Management describes some new ways to prevent trade secret theft in Intellectual Property Theft: Lessons From Coca-Cola. The article has a very good reason to pay attention to trade secret theft:

For companies, the bottom line is at stake. Employee theft can cost companies anywhere from $200 million to upwards of $1.2 trillion annually, according to the Segal Co. Twenty percent of businesses fail every year because of internal theft and fraud, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

I added the emphasis to that last sentence. Losing trade secrets can mean losing the company.

Profiles International Inc. of Waco, Texas, plans to release several new products by the end of the year to add to an existing suite of employee screening services. A product called Employee Engagement Assessment gauges employees in six categories. The product also dissects the company’s culture and places it in four different categories: relationship-based, innovation-based, process-based and transaction-based.

There is a link between employee theft and employee attitude, says Jim Sirbasku, CEO of Profiles International. "The less engaged a person is, the more they are apt to see the company as a non-personal thing, and the more apt they are to take something," he says.

Reference checks and even background checks aren’t enough today, experts say. Companies need to keep close tabs of their employees after the honeymoon period.

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There are businesses that specialize in creating trade-secret protection programs for companies. Consor Intellectual Asset Management in La Jolla, California, creates information protection programs for companies to help them make the most money from their intellectual property. Consor also helps firms that have fallen victim assess the damage done.

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Also, companies should be "prepared financially and emotionally to go after someone who steals a trade secret," says Don Kelly, CEO of Intellectual Asset Management Associates, an intellectual property consultancy based in Alexandria, Virginia. Trade-secret-proofing comes with a price tag (anywhere from $25 to $200 for a background check and as much as $50,000 for customized programs for smaller companies), but the investment makes up for the potential losses, Kelly says.

And there are lawyers, like me, who will also work with you to protect your trade secrets.