Trade Secrets — guides, checklists and articles
25 practical documents on Trade Secrets, newest first.
By document type
- Articles (7)
- Checklists (6)
- Guides (6)
- Toolkits (6)
Documents
- Trade Secrets and the DTSA: Protecting What You Can’t Register · Article — A trade secret is valuable business information that draws its value from being secret and that its owner takes reasonable steps to keep secret. This article…
- Trying a Trade Secret Case: Identification, Protective Orders, and the Proof Problem · Article — A trade secret case is unlike any other intellectual property case because the plaintiff must describe the thing it is suing over without destroying it, and…
- Trade Secret Protection Toolkit: Programs, Departures, and DTSA Litigation · Toolkit — This toolkit is a guided tour of every Marksy document that bears on trade secret protection, arranged in the order the work actually happens: build the…
- Contract Manufacturing IP Checklist: Tooling and Mould Ownership, Specification and Improvement Terms, Confidentiality Controls, Overrun and Gray Goods, and Exit · Checklist — A contract manufacturing relationship transfers designs, specifications, process knowledge, tooling, and trademarks to a party in another jurisdiction, usually…
- Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Toolkit: Lawful Collection, Clean Rooms, and Contamination · Toolkit — Competitive intelligence is lawful, valuable, and one wrong hire away from a misappropriation claim. This toolkit assembles the working material for…
- Trade Secret Protection and Departure Checklist: Inventory, Controls, and Exit Forensics · Checklist — This is the working document for the two jobs a trade secret program has to do: build the record before anything goes wrong, and execute cleanly in the…
- Contract Manufacturing, OEM, and Private Label IP Toolkit: Tooling, Specifications, Secrecy, and Exit · Toolkit — A contract manufacturing relationship transfers designs, specifications, process knowledge, tooling, and trademarks to a party in another jurisdiction, usually…
- Contracting With a Manufacturer: A Practitioner's Guide to Tooling Ownership, Specification Control, Overruns, and Exit · Guide — This guide sets out how to contract with a manufacturer so that the brand retains the ability to make its own product somewhere else — which is the practical…
- Competitive Intelligence Checklist: Source Classification, Reverse Engineering Documentation, Clean Room Procedures, Hiring and Onboarding Controls, and Contamination Escalation · Checklist — A ten-phase working checklist for building, running, and defending a competitive intelligence function. Phases one and two map who collects and classify every…
- Building a Trade Secret Program That Survives Litigation: A Practitioner's Guide to Reasonable Measures, Onboarding, and Exit · Guide — This is the build manual for a trade secret program, written for the lawyer who has to make one exist and then defend it under oath. It runs fifteen numbered…
- Confidentiality and NDA Toolkit: Drafting, Negotiating, and Enforcing · Toolkit — A confidentiality agreement is the most frequently signed and least frequently read document in commercial practice, and the clauses that decide disputes are…
- Confidentiality Agreement Checklist: Definitions, Exclusions, Residuals, and Return of Information · Checklist — Confidentiality agreements fail on provisions nobody discussed, in situations nobody anticipated. This checklist runs one from form selection through drafting,…
- The Factory That Knows Everything: Tooling, Specifications, and the IP You Hand to a Contract Manufacturer · Article — Outsourcing manufacture means handing a third party everything needed to make the product — and, frequently, everything needed to make it for someone else.…
- Running a Competitive Intelligence Programme: A Practitioner's Guide to Lawful Collection, Reverse Engineering Records, Hiring Controls, and Contamination Response · Guide — A working guide to designing, governing, and defending a competitive intelligence function. It opens with the framing that resolves most questions: the law…
- Trade Secrets and the DTSA: Protecting What You Cannot Register · Article — Trade secrets are the only major form of intellectual property with no registry, no examiner, and no certificate — protection exists only so long as the…
- Trade Secret Litigation Toolkit: Identification, Seizure, Injunctions, and Trial · Toolkit — A trade secret case is decided by evidence that expires within weeks of the departure that starts it and by an identification document written before anyone…
- Drafting and Negotiating a Confidentiality Agreement: A Practitioner's Guide to Scope, Term, and Residuals · Guide — This guide takes a confidentiality agreement from the decision to send one through negotiation, execution, administration, and enforcement. It starts with the…
- Employee, Founder, and Mobility IP Toolkit: Covenants, Departures, and Ownership Disputes · Toolkit — People carry intellectual property in their heads and on their laptops, and every hire and every departure moves some of it. This toolkit maps the whole area:…
- Restrictive Covenant and Departure Checklist: Drafting, Onboarding, Exit, and Enforcement · Checklist — Eighteen phases covering the whole life of a restrictive covenant program, from the state matrix that replaces the national template to the injunction motion…
- Learning About Your Competitor Lawfully: Reverse Engineering, Benchmarking, and the Line Trade Secret Law Draws · Article — Every company wants to know what its competitors are doing, and most of the ways of finding out are perfectly lawful. This article draws the line trade secret…
- The Agreement Everyone Signs and Nobody Reads: What a Nondisclosure Agreement Actually Does · Article — A nondisclosure agreement is the most frequently signed and least frequently read document in commercial practice, and the clauses that decide disputes are…
- Drafting and Enforcing Restrictive Covenants: A Practitioner's Guide to Scope, Consideration, and Choice of Law · Guide — A drafting and enforcement guide for the covenants that survive modern state law, written for counsel maintaining agreements across many jurisdictions. It…
- Trade Secret Litigation Checklist: Identification, Seizure, Protective Orders, and Damages · Checklist — A trade secret case is decided by evidence that expires within weeks of the departure that starts it, and by an identification document written before anyone…
- Where an Employee Can Go: Noncompetes, Restrictive Covenants, and Employee Mobility · Article — The law of employee mobility changed more between 2020 and 2026 than in the previous fifty years, and most form agreements still reflect the older world. This…
- Litigating a Trade Secret Misappropriation Claim: A Practitioner's Guide to Pleading, Seizure, and Injunctions · Guide — This guide runs a trade secret case from the departure that starts it through trial and remedies, from both chairs. It opens with the seventy-two hours of…