Many companies allow their employees to blog during work, or off work, about work, and work related issues. Companies should be aware that their employees may be tempted to blog about subjects that include trade secrets. For instance, on their own time, employees may blog about what they do at work, what they are inventing at work, who their company’s customers are, how the company attracts customers, and other proprietary and confidential information. All of these subjects are potentially exposing the company’s trade secrets. A company must take reasonable measures to protect disclosure of its trade secrets, and keep the trade secrets out of the public domain. If a company fails to take reasonable measures to protect its trade secrets from exposure in the public domain, they will no longer be considered trade secrets.
What can a company do to protect its trade secrets from blogging employees?
The simple answer is to create a blogging policy. A policy should outline the parameters that employees must follow while blogging about the company, and should coincide with the company’s policy manual related to confidential and proprietary information. The following items are suggestions to include in a company blogging policy.
The policy should contain provisions that the employee shall not blog about proprietary and confidential information. The company should provide a definition of proprietary and confidential information.
The policy should contain a provision requiring that the employee shall not post any obscene, defamatory, libelous, abusive or hateful remarks about any the company, company employees, company’s competitors, or company’s customers or partners.
The policy should contain a provision requiring the employee to gain permission from the company before using the company’s symbols, trademarks, or graphics.
For employees who have personal blogs unrelated to the company, the company may want to incorporate a provision that requires the blogger to place a disclaimer on its blog, that all content is that of the author and does not reflect the views of the company.
The policy should not stifle creativity or treat the employee as though they cannot write about work-related topics, but must inform the employee about the legal boundaries of their actions related to blogging about trade secrets, and that the company must take reasonable steps to protect its trade secrets so that they do not lose their status as trade secrets.