New Trade Secret and Noncompete Case Growth Graph

By: Russell Beck (Fair Competition Law)

About twice a year, I update my chart of reported noncompete and trade secrets decisions. Here is the latest (full size).

Over a decade ago, I became curious to see how many reported trade secret and noncompete decisions were issued each year in all of the federal and state courts around the country. So, I did a “back of the envelope” calculation. I have performed similar calculations every year since.

The graph shows three things: (1) the blue bars show all noncompete decisions reported on Westlaw; (2) the red bars show all trade secrets decisions reported on Westlaw; and (3) the yellow bars show all decisions involving the Defend Trade Secrets Act reported on Westlaw. To be clear, these are decisions reported on Westlaw; they do not reflect all of the decisions in these types of cases. For example, courts often do not report out (all of) their decisions, and Westlaw may not pick them up. Nor do they directly tell us the number of cases filed, though one could assume that they correlate at least to some extent…

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