Oklahoma City Trade Secret Attorney Protecting Proprietary Business Information
A sales manager quits, and within weeks a rival calls your customers with your prices in hand. When confidential information walks out the door, every day of delay can mean lost accounts and a harder case to prove. Silverline Legal helps Oklahoma City companies move quickly to protect trade secrets, from preserving evidence and sending demand letters to seeking court orders that stop further use.
What Can Be Protected As A Trade Secret In Oklahoma?
Under the Oklahoma Uniform Trade Secrets Act, 78 O.S. § 85 et seq., a trade secret is information that gets its economic value from not being generally known or easily discovered by others who could profit from it. The owner must also make reasonable efforts to keep it confidential.
To bring a misappropriation claim, a business generally needs to show that its information meets this definition and that someone acquired it through improper means or used or disclosed it without permission. Courts often look at the protections the business had in place, such as restricted access, password controls and confidentiality or nondisclosure agreements, to decide whether its efforts were reasonable.
Information that commonly qualifies includes:
- Business and sales information: customer lists, supplier pricing, profit margins and sales strategies.
- Technical and energy-sector information: proprietary formulas, oilfield equipment designs, chemical blends and manufacturing processes.
- Software and digital assets: source code, algorithms and custom-built platforms.
- Operational know-how: training materials, quality control procedures and unpatented research data.
Unlike a patent, which expires after a set term, trade secret protection can last indefinitely as long as the information stays confidential. It’s one of several tools for protecting intellectual property, and for many businesses it’s the most practical one.
Drafting Enforceable NDAs In Oklahoma: Avoiding Void Restrictive Covenants
Oklahoma law treats most agreements that restrain someone from practicing a lawful profession or business as void under 15 O.S. § 219. For employees, 15 O.S. § 219A makes clear that a former employee may work in the same or a similar line of business, even if they signed a noncompete. What an employer can restrict is direct solicitation of its established customers, and 15 O.S. § 219B separately allows agreements barring former employees from recruiting your staff.
Because broad noncompetes aren’t an option, carefully drafted confidentiality and nonsolicitation agreements carry much of the weight in protecting your business. A strong nondisclosure agreement (NDA) defines confidential information specifically, requires employees to return company property and data when they leave and avoids restrictions so broad that a court could view them as a noncompete in disguise. Precise drafting makes the agreement more likely to hold up and works alongside the protections already available under Oklahoma’s trade secret statute.
Emergency Injunctive Relief For Misappropriation And Departing Employee Breaches
When a departing employee takes confidential information, waiting months for trial can mean losing the customers or advantage you’re trying to protect. Under 78 O.S. § 87, Oklahoma courts can order a halt to both actual and threatened misappropriation, and courts can also enforce valid confidentiality and nonsolicitation agreements through injunctions.
A temporary restraining order (TRO) provides short-term protection, sometimes within days, when a business shows it faces immediate and irreparable harm that money damages can’t adequately repair. A preliminary injunction follows a hearing and can keep restrictions in place while the case proceeds, provided the business shows, among other things, that it is likely to succeed on its claims.
Courts expect evidence, not suspicion. Our attorneys work with forensic specialists to review download logs, email forwarding, cloud uploads and USB activity, building the record needed to support a request for emergency relief.
Get A Plan To Protect Your Confidential Business Information
Every day a former employee keeps your data, the risk of wider leaks grows. Call Silverline Legal at 405-353-0869 or send our lawyers a message to speak with an Oklahoma City trade secret attorney. We represent intellectual property clients nationwide.