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Practice/Industry Group Overview
In today’s economy, protecting your key employees, customer relationships, market share and confidential business information has never been more essential to maintaining your company’s competitive edge. We help you compete fiercely, but lawfully and help you protect your business advantage against unfair and unlawful competition.
We work with you to develop a business information protection program that safeguards your company from potential legal and business landmines before trouble arises. This focused strategy protects your company with non-compete and non-solicitation agreements, policies to guard your proprietary business information and management and anti-raiding strategies to protect and maintain your key talent. Further, if you are planning to hire employees from a competitor, we can help you do it lawfully and avoid potential lawsuits.
If your proprietary business information has been breached, your non-compete agreements have been violated or former employees have improperly solicited your customers or removed electronic data, prompt action often is essential to preserve your company's information and employment or customer relationships. Our experience allows us to mount a quick and aggressive response to business competition challenges.
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Services Available
Anti-rading
As the economy rebounds, experts predict that employee turnover will jump dramatically, especially among specialized and highly skilled employees whose proven track records put them in high demand. Protecting your investment in your workforce – your intellectual capital – is critical to your company’s success. The cost of an employee leaving to go to a competitor can be far greater than your training investment. Our attorneys help you defend your business against unlawful raiding by your competitors and develop with you an anti-raiding strategy to help you protect your key talent.
If you are looking to build your company’s business by acquiring lateral talent, we can help you weigh the risks involved in hiring from a competitor and avoid potential legal landmines. The strength of your workforce is one of your greatest assets and investments. We can help you protect and develop this asset effectively.
Antitrust advice and litigation
When litigation is unavoidable, our attorneys provide aggressive representation to clients in all areas of complex antitrust litigation, including:
- class actions and multi-district litigation related to mergers
- distribution restrictions
- price and promotional allowance discrimination
- resale price maintenance
- monopolization
- attempts and conspiracies to monopolize
- predatory pricing and sales below cost
- price fixing
- group boycotts or refusals to deal
- intellectual property antitrust issues
Our attorneys’ experience includes both jury and non-jury trials on behalf of defendants and plaintiffs.
We also represent our clients in complex commercial litigation involving business torts, such as unfair competition, inducement of breach of contract and interference with business opportunities. We also litigate complex contract claims, including disputes between bidders on government contracts.
Competitive interference claims
If your organization plans to hire a terrific candidate, you need to know whether the prospective employee has a non-compete, non-solicitation or non-recruitment agreement. Those agreements potentially can affect the candidate’s effectiveness for your company. Our attorneys can help you understand your company’s rights, opportunities and legal risks of hiring that candidate.
Tortious interference laws prevent unlawful solicitations of your competitor’s customers as well as prevent your competitors’ unlawful solicitation of your customers. The circumstances constituting unlawful solicitation vary from state to state. We help you implement proper solicitation practices and policies to avoid unlawful solicitation claims against your company. If you believe that your business has been the victim of a competitor’s unlawful solicitation, we help you determine your rights and pursue your remedies.
Non-compete, non-solicitation, non-recruitment and non-disclosure agreements
Your key employees and your business information are elements critical to achieving a competitive advantage. By protecting your key talent and business information, you can maintain that advantage. Our attorneys help you safeguard your business with non-compete, non-solicitation, non-recruitment and non-disclosure agreements.
Non-compete, non-solicitation, non-recruitment and non-disclosure agreements are frequently litigated, and their effectiveness often turns on their terms. With our extensive litigation experience enforcing and “breaking” these agreements, we know which terms to include and which terms to avoid to best protect your top talent and key business information.
Non-competition and trade secret counseling and litigation
Your business works hard to achieve and maintain its competitive advantages. You may build customer lists, develop trade secrets or protect your innovations through patents, trademarks, and copyrights. But maintaining a competitive advantage requires enforceable non-competition, non-solicitation and non-recruitment agreements – and the willingness to take steps, when necessary, to enforce those agreements. Our attorneys know how. Over many years and hundreds of cases, we have helped clients successfully protect their competitive advantages.
We start by preparing and negotiating enforceable clauses and agreements. Then, if issues arise, we work with you to enforce the terms of those agreements. Further, if you are planning to hire employees from a competitor, we can help you do it lawfully and avoid potential lawsuits. We attempt to protect your rights and help you obtain the relief to which you are entitled, first through informal means, when possible, and then through litigation or arbitration when necessary.
Our work includes:
- Non-competition, non-solicitation, non-recruitment, trade secret, confidentiality, and intellectual property agreements
- Informal dispute resolution and settlement
- Evidence gathering, including fact investigation and forensic computer analysis
- Temporary restraining orders and permanent injunctions
- Arbitration, mediation and litigation
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