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Inevitable Disclosure Still Not Settled
08/29/2005

In the seminal case of PepsiCo Inc. v. Redmond, 54 F.3d 1262, 1269 (1995), the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an injunction of a manager from working for a competitor for six months, where he was party to a confidentiality agreement but had no noncompetition agreement. Significantly, rather than finding that PepsiCo had to prove that he actually had misappropriated PepsiCo's trade secrets, the court noted the manager's knowledge of PepsiCo's strategic business information and held that a "plaintiff may prove a claim of trade secret misappropriation by demonstrating that the defendant's new employment will inevitably lead him to rely on the plaintiff's trade secrets." This principle has come to be known as the "inevitable disclosure doctrine."

 Download "Inevitable Disclosure Still Not Settled," The National Law Journal (August 29, 2005) [pdf]