A familiar scenario is playing out all over the country as the recession waxes and wanes, the job market tightens, and employees are forced to become more mobile. Employers learn that a key employee, usually high-ranking and armed with valuable competitive information, intends to join a direct competitor and feels free to do so in the absence of a noncompete agreement.
That’s exactly what a senior vice president, equipped with the secret formula for making the “nooks and crannies” in Thomas’ English muffins, recently attempted to do. His half-baked idea failed as the Third Circuit in Bimbo Bakeries USA, Inc. v. Botticella, 613 F.3d 102 (3rd Cir. 2010), recently held on interlocutory appeal that, under Pennsylvania’s “inevitable disclosure” doctrine, a trial court “has discretion to enjoin a defendant from beginning new employment if the facts of the case demonstrate a substantial threat of trade secret misappropriation.”
