A recent Seventh Circuit decision sends the clear message that companies should take precautions to secure their trade secrets by limiting the availability of the information to those who need to know it and by protecting information that is not readily available to the public. Judge Posner delivered the opinion in American Family Mutual Insurance Co. v. Bonnie L. Roth, 2007 WL 1309403 (7th Cir. 2007). The defendants had been insurance agents for the plaintiff. The plaintiff was awarded a preliminary injunction against the defendants enjoining them from using trade secrets, including customer information that they stole upon their termination from the company. The issues were governed by Wisconsin law, which has adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. The court found that the customer information was in fact a trade secret because the information derives independent economic value from sources not readily available, and is information that has been kept secret by reasonable means. Specifically, the customer information was filtered based on their likelihood of buying insurance, and the information was only made available to agents who were assigned those specific customers or potential customers. The court held that the plaintiff was entitled to an injunction because the information was clearly a trade secret under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and Wisconsin law, but the court remanded to the district court so that the district court could rework the injunction to be more inclusive. In the wake of Roth, it appears that the greater precautions a company takes, the greater the likelihood that an injunction will be granted to continue protecting the companies’ trade secrets.
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