The most important thing for you to do is to take action immediately.

      As soon as you know or believe that your trade secret has been, or is about to be, improperly disclosed or used, you need to initiate an action to stop it. Call an attorney.

      You can do nothing about someone who independently, by his or her own work, comes upon the same process, ingredient, and so forth that you discovered and uses it. For that reason, when patent protection is possible, despite its limitation in time and the expense of obtaining it, you should carefully consider the patent option.

      Also, nothing can stop a determined person who knows your trade secret from broadcasting it to the world, taking it to another job with another company, or starting a new business based on it. However, if you've done everything discussed in this section regarding identifying your trade secret, documenting its value to your business, and taking reasonable precautions to guard it, then you have recourse from both unauthorized disclosure and misappropriation of your trade secret. You can sue for damages, even punitive damages, and you may be able to injunctively prevent others to whom your trade secret was revealed from using it. How effective you can be in such actions is directly dependent on your taking the appropriate actions to protect your secret in advance of the disclosure or theft of it.

      One important issue that arises, when you have to bring legal action against someone who ran off with your trade secret, is the matter of venue. Where will the case be tried? Since trade secret protection is strictly a matter of state law, in the absence of anything to the contrary, courts in the location (perhaps at the other end of the country) to which the thief has fled or simply moved to take another job will have jurisdiction over him or her, and you would have to go that state for relief. The laws of that state would also apply. This can be prevented by written confidentiality agreements.

      Agreements also preclude defenses based on inadvertent or unwitting disclosure. In most states, if it can be shown that the unauthorized disclosure or misappropriation was intentional, or even that the person involved ought to have known not to reveal or use the secret, then punitive damages as a multiple of, or in addition to, actual damages may be claimed.

      In order to claim any damages, though, you need to be able to show how and to what extent you were damaged. A secret that has no demonstrable economic value is, by definition, not a trade secret, and you can't collect anything for damages you didn't or won't suffer. So, documentation of the actual value of a trade secret is essential to protecting it. While this can be done to some extent after the fact, it is much easier, and it makes a much more credible presentation, to document this aspect of your trade secret by making records and keeping related documentation as you go.

      Finally, injunction preventing another's illicit use of your trade secret during the time your claims are before the courts is the most effective way to limit both your short-term economic damage and the possibility that your trade secret will be further spread among your competitors. The more you have properly protected your secret, documented your secret, and acted to protect it, the better are your chances of obtaining injunctive relief.

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