In the business-critical field of noncompetes and trade secrets, the most vital assets of an enterprise are at stake: goodwill, customers, information, reputation, and competitive advantage. In handling these matters, Carrington Coleman clients benefit from deep experience driving tailored solutions. Whether a client needs rapid injunctive relief or careful, precise preparation of an employment agreement, our team makes it happen.

Clients coast-to-coast in a broad range of industries turn to us when the stakes are high and time is short. We’ve advised businesses ranging from professional services firms to technology companies to healthcare organizations, and varying in size from Fortune 100 companies to small business owners, as well as C-suite executives and employees. We design noncompetes, advise on hiring/termination-related disputes, and are often consulted before and when these decisions are being made.

Effective – plus articulate in numerous technologies

Trade secrets matters often turn on technology. With technical backgrounds and litigation experience ranging from semiconductors and software to nanotech and life sciences, we are highly conversant in the technologies at issue in most trade secrets cases. Clients count on us to bring an aggressive, effective approach to defending these disputes – seeking from the outset of the case to leverage the trend requiring the identification of each trade secret with element-by-element specificity. Our team brings to bear our decades of experience uncovering prior art in the public record to invalidate patents and demonstrate that a particular technology does not qualify as a trade secret — sometimes using the party’s own patent disclosures to do this.

Primary Contacts

Areas of Focus

  • Advising clients on hiring and resignation/termination to prepare effective noncompetes, while minimizing the risk of litigation.
  • Nimble, effective, short-fuse injunction practice when tactically appropriate or initiated by the adversary.
  • Trade secret litigation, utilizing our strong technical background and a particularly effective defense practice, with experience at using lack of specificity as a strategy.
  • Depth and breadth across the full range of venues, from negotiation to trial, arbitration and appeals.
  • A uniquely interdisciplinary approach, integrating employment law, IP, contract law, and common-law duties and statutory duties.