A departing executive who never took a document could still be enjoined — the Seventh Circuit's 1995 ruling let an employer prove misappropriation by showing disclosure was inevitable, and the country has been divided over it ever since.
A federal court let an IBM executive walk straight to Hewlett-Packard, holding that a doctrine New York entertains in theory fails without particularized secrets, near-identical roles, and proof of bad faith.
The fight over the recipe for Thomas' English Muffins produced a Third Circuit ruling that an employer need not prove disclosure is inevitable — only that the threat of misappropriation is sufficiently substantial.
A New York federal court refused to enjoin a departing internet executive and warned that inevitable disclosure should be invoked only in the rarest of cases — building the doctrine's most influential set of brakes.
