Reasonable Measures

Hosted by Chris Buntel, featuring Matthew Prewitt and Linda Jackson, Partners at ArentFox Schiff, this episode of the Reasonable Measures Podcast explores how companies can protect trade secrets throughout the employee lifecycle: onboarding, ongoing employment, and offboarding.

Linda and Matt explain that companies often focus too heavily on employees leaving for competitors, while overlooking risks that arise during recruiting and throughout employment. During interviews, candidates may inadvertently disclose a former employer’s confidential information, potentially exposing their new employer to trade secret litigation. Once employees are onboarded, companies must balance employee retention with appropriate data controls, access restrictions, and ongoing training to prevent confidential information from being disclosed or misused.

The conversation also explores the importance of well-defined offboarding procedures, including recovering company devices, revoking system access, reviewing unusual data transfers, and reminding departing employees of their continuing confidentiality obligations. The speakers emphasize that trade secret protection is not just about preventing information from leaving the organization. Companies must also demonstrate that they took reasonable measures to identify, protect, and control access to that information.

Finally, Linda and Matt discuss how artificial intelligence is creating both new risks and new opportunities for trade secret protection. While AI may enable competitors to replicate employees’ specialized knowledge, it may also help companies compartmentalize sensitive information and reduce reliance on individual knowledge holders.

The main takeaway is clear: effective trade secret protection requires a proactive, company-wide approach at every stage of employment. Organizations that combine thoughtful hiring practices, employee retention, ongoing training, technical safeguards, and disciplined offboarding processes are better positioned to protect valuable information and defend their trade secrets if a dispute arises.

Takeaways

1. Trade secret protection starts before an employee is hired. Companies should train recruiters and hiring managers to avoid soliciting confidential information from candidates about former employers and establish clear onboarding procedures to prevent trade secret risks.

2. Protect trade secrets throughout the employee lifecycle. Companies often focus on employees leaving for competitors, but risks arise during recruiting, throughout employment, and during offboarding. A proactive approach is essential at every stage.

3. Employee training and data controls are critical. Employees need to understand what qualifies as a trade secret, including business information such as customer lists, pricing strategies, and market research. Access restrictions, monitoring, and ongoing training help prevent accidental disclosures and misuse.

4. A consistent offboarding process reduces risk. Companies should recover devices, revoke system access, review unusual data transfers, and reinforce continuing confidentiality obligations. Carefully managed communication with a departing employee’s new employer may also help protect sensitive information when appropriate.

5. AI is creating new risks and opportunities for trade secret protection. While competitors may use AI to replicate employees’ specialized knowledge, companies can also explore AI to compartmentalize sensitive information and reduce reliance on individual employees. Proactive planning is essential to address these evolving risks.

Full transcript here: https://www.tangibly.com/episode-26-the-three-phases-of-employment-trade-secret-risks-from-hire-to-exit/

In this episode of Reasonable Measures, Chris Buntel speaks with Pape Dieng, IP Director at the Wyss Center, about what he has learned during his first year managing trade secrets in a collaborative research environment.

Pape shares how research organizations can build a stronger culture around confidentiality, IP protection, and trade secret management, especially when scientists and researchers are naturally focused on publishing, sharing, and collaboration.

Chris and Pape discuss why patents are not always the right path, how trade secrets can strengthen startup value, and why the best approach is often simple, practical, and focused on identifying what creates value.

The episode is a practical conversation for research organizations, startups, IP teams, and anyone thinking about how to protect innovation before it is disclosed too early.

Takeaways

• Trade secret protection in research environments starts with culture, not just legal documents.
• Researchers often need practical examples to understand what should stay confidential and why it matters.
• Publishing and collaboration are important, but some core value may need to be protected before it is shared.
• Patents are not always the best path, especially for AI based innovation, algorithms, know how, and other confidential technical information.
• Trade secrets can help startups show a broader and stronger IP portfolio to investors and partners.
• The real sign of success is behavior change, when researchers proactively ask what should be protected.
• The simplest advice is often the strongest: keep it practical, follow the value, and protect what matters most.

Mintz Partner Brad Scheller joins Chris Buntel, CIPO at Tangibly, on Reasonable Measures to discuss why HR plays such an important role in protecting trade secrets.

They cover how companies can reduce risk through onboarding, employee training, access management, and offboarding, and why many trade secret issues start with people who already have access to sensitive information.

The takeaway: trade secret protection does not need to be complicated, but it does need to be intentional, documented, and repeatable.

Listen to the full episode to learn how HR can become a stronger line of defense for confidential information.

In this episode of the Reasonable Measures podcast, Chris Buntel speaks with Simone Frattasi, Head of Global IP at Maersk, about whether trade secrets can support sustainability goals rather than stand in the way of them. Their conversation looks at how companies can help accelerate the energy transition through more open IP strategies while still protecting valuable know how. Simone shares how Maersk has approached this through initiatives like the ESG Smart Pool and IP for Energy Transition, both designed to expand access to climate related innovation and encourage more collaboration across the IP ecosystem.

A central theme of the episode is that patents alone are not enough to move sustainability efforts forward quickly. Chris and Simone explain that patents often capture an early version of an invention, while much of the real commercial value lives in the later stage know how, process improvements, and implementation details that remain as trade secrets. Rather than choosing between full secrecy and full disclosure, they suggest that companies can share the impact and value of an innovation without giving away the technical details behind it. The broader takeaway is that trade secrets are not incompatible with sustainability. They can play an important role in making collaboration more effective, especially when companies use thoughtful agreements, controlled access, and balanced partnership models.

Takeaways

• Trade secrets and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. They can work together when companies share the value and impact of an innovation without immediately disclosing the underlying know how.
• Patent pools alone may not be enough to accelerate climate innovation. A great deal of commercially meaningful knowledge sits outside the patent in later stage know how, optimization, and scale up work.
• When deeper sharing is necessary, companies can use stronger contractual protections, data rooms, and staged disclosure rather than treating trade secret sharing as an all or nothing decision.
• Collaboration is essential for sustainability, but it requires better frameworks. Simone highlights the need for balanced ownership models and practical templates so both large companies and startups can collaborate fairly.
• Initiatives like IP for Energy Transition are working to build awareness, create tools, and eventually define models that could support broader collaboration in this area.
• The big message is that trade secrets should not be viewed as blockers to sustainability. When handled thoughtfully, they can help companies collaborate without giving up the core value of their innovation.

In this episode of the Reasonable Measure Podcast, Tim and Chris break down TRAPs, short for Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, and why they are emerging as noncompetes face growing legal pressure. These “stay or pay” agreements require employees to repay training costs if they leave a company, which can effectively discourage job changes even when someone is not joining a competitor. Tim and Chris explore how courts are beginning to evaluate these agreements, when they may be considered reasonable, and when they start to look like noncompetes in disguise.

Key Takeaways
• TRAPs are a new workaround employers are using as noncompetes face legal scrutiny.
• These agreements can apply simply when an employee leaves, even if they do not join a competitor.
• Courts are signaling that TRAPs must be narrowly tailored and tied to real training costs.
• Large repayment amounts or long timeframes can make these agreements look like noncompetes.
• Recent cases and settlements suggest regulators are starting to push back on overly broad TRAPs.
• In the end, the best retention strategy is still treating employees well and building a strong workplace.

View the transcript here: https://www.tangibly.com/episode-22-its-a-trap-what-is-replacing-noncompetes/

Chris Buntel of Tangibly is joined by Nick McLeod, Principal of IP and Intangible Assets at Invara, to unpack why cybersecurity and trade secret protection are now inseparable.

They break down how trade secrets are really lost today, from mass downloads and risky file sharing to accidental leaks through personal email, cloud tools, and public AI platforms. Nick explains the difference between defending against external attackers and managing insider risk with role based access, monitoring, and behavioral analytics. They also discuss incident response planning, tabletop exercises, and why the best programs feel boring because they prevent problems before they become lawsuits.

Summary

In this milestone 20th episode of the Reasonable Measures Podcast, Tim Londergan and Chris Buntel dive into one of the most consequential questions in modern trade secret law: how far the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) can reach beyond U.S. borders.

The conversation centers on the ongoing Xcoal case, where a Japanese employee working entirely abroad allegedly downloaded sensitive business information from a U.S.-based company’s servers. Despite never setting foot in the United States, the defendant now faces a trade secret lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court. Tim and Chris unpack why the case survived a motion to dismiss and what that says about jurisdiction under DTSA.

They broaden the discussion with comparisons to the Motorola v. Hytera case and a Canadian DTSA action involving remote employees, highlighting how even minimal U.S. contact—such as accessing U.S. servers or attending a single meeting—can be enough to pull foreign actors into U.S. courts.

The episode closes with practical guidance for companies operating internationally, including server placement strategies, remote employee policies, and ways trade secret owners can proactively strengthen jurisdictional ties to the U.S. As Tim and Chris make clear, DTSA’s reach is expanding, and companies should plan accordingly.

In this episode of Reasonable Measures, Tim Londergan and Chris Buntel unpack one of the biggest developments in intellectual property this year: the 1.5 billion dollar Anthropic copyright settlement. The discussion explores what the case means for creators, AI companies, and the broader balance between innovation and protection in the age of large language models.

Tim and Chris walk through the details of the lawsuit brought by author Andrea Bartz and others, who alleged that Anthropic’s AI systems scraped copyrighted books without permission. They discuss how the resulting settlement reframes the boundaries of fair use and how it signals that AI generated progress now comes with a royalty price tag.

The conversation expands beyond copyright to consider how AI challenges traditional IP frameworks, especially around authorship, ownership, and creation. Chris and Tim also draw parallels to trade secret law, noting that while AI cannot legally invent or author, it can still create valuable trade secrets, making this form of protection increasingly central to the AI industry’s future.

Takeaways

• The Anthropic settlement sets a major precedent for AI and IP, affirming that large language models must pay for the data they use.

• Fair use arguments have limits. When entire works are reproduced or leveraged commercially, creators deserve compensation.

• The settlement highlights that copyright is only one part of the AI and IP equation. Trade secrets now represent the core value of many AI companies.

• AI cannot be a legal inventor or author, but it can generate protectable trade secrets, reshaping how innovation is defined and safeguarded.

• The outcome reflects a cost of doing business for AI developers, establishing a model for how future disputes may be settled.

• As Tim and Chris note, trade secrets are no longer plan B. They are becoming the default protection strategy for cutting edge technology.

In this episode of Reasonable Measures, Chris Buntel welcomes longtime colleague Ray Miller, Partner at DLA Piper and Chair of the Life Sciences practice, to discuss the evolving role of trade secrets in mergers and acquisitions. While patents once dominated due diligence, the conversation highlights how know how, key employees, and trade secrets now often carry more value than formal IP rights. Chris and Ray reflect on past transactions where the real “magic” was not in patents but in the undocumented processes and expertise held by individuals.

They explore practical considerations for both buyers and sellers, including policies, trade secret inventories, employee retention, and regulatory interactions. The discussion also touches on the increasing risks of disclosure through government transparency, the rise of trade secret only transactions in areas like AI, and how organizations consistently underestimate the number and importance of their trade secrets.

In this episode of the Reasonable Measures podcast, Chris Buntel is joined by Raluca Davidof Insight Contracts Law Firm in France for an international discussion on a deceptively tricky issue: drawing the line between an employee’s professional expertise, a company’s confidential know-how, and legally protected trade secrets. Together they unpack why this distinction matters, especially in biotech and medtech industries where highly specialized expertise can blur boundaries, and how companies can map, train, and govern information effectively. The conversation covers the role of HR in onboarding and offboarding, the importance of repeated training and awareness, and how proactive mapping of knowledge creates both external benefits such as investor confidence and monetization opportunities and internal benefits such as avoiding duplication, saving time, and enabling smoother employee transitions.