On Friday afternoon, October 29, 2010, before Judge Susan Souder of the Baltimore County Circuit Court, we defeated a motion for preliminary injunction against our client whereby his former employer, a Baltimore hedge fund, was seeking to prevent him from working for a New York financial institution. Our client, a research scientist and mathmetician, had signed a limited non-compete agreement and confidentiality agreement, but his former employer argued that he had taken confidential and proprietary documents before leaving his former job, and that he was likely to disclose those secrets to his new employer. After hearing six hours of testimony, including from a computer forensic expert, the Court held that the former employer had failed to demonstrate that our client was likely to disclose confidential trade secrets and rejected the preliminary injunction motion.
We typically advise several dozen clients each year regarding similar situations involving non-competition agreements and non-solicitation agreements, and usually only two or three of those matters end up in court. When those cases do go to court, they are usually resolved fairly quickly through a motion for temporary restraining order or motion for preliminary injunction. If you are facing such a situation, do not hesitate to call us, as time is often a critical element in such matters.