By Warren Braunig and Andrew Crain
Cloud-based computing provides numerous benefits in today’s modern, hybrid work economy, such as allowing employees to work from anywhere, to seamlessly transition between home and office, and to more efficiently collaborate with colleagues and partners. Businesses, especially Silicon Valley tech companies, are increasingly choosing to leverage cloud-based solutions, such as Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive, Sheets, etc.), Microsoft M365, or Apple iWork with iCloud, for their information management. Such solutions enable employees to access and edit documents across their devices and save copies of those documents locally for offline access. But cloud-based document management comes with its own set of risks.
As a trade secrets litigator and a forensic expert, respectively, we have witnessed how the expansion of cloud computing has created new challenges for companies seeking to protect their trade secrets, as well as new opportunities for unscrupulous employees who might want to pilfer them. In a number of recent cases we’ve been involved with, confidential information was dispersed widely via cloud systems (sometimes intentionally, sometimes inadvertently), resulting in costly and sometimes confounding litigation. How does this happen? What does this mean for handling today’s trade secrets disputes? And what best practices can companies follow to minimize risk?
Read the full article on IPWatchdog.com.
Warren Braunig is a partner with Keker, Van Nest & Peters. Andrew Crain is a Managing Director at Berkeley Research Group.