Three weeks before Christmas, in 2016, Greg Robillard received an email from his lawyer.
The company intended to sue him over his GitHub account.
It was the warning shot in what would become a four-year legal nightmare.
Afterward, he felt office attitudes shift.
He also said he heard a job applicant dismissed as “some old guy in his 40s.”
Opal’s lawyers filed a response denying his allegations, and the parties began discovery.
Suddenly he was being cast not as a victim of discrimination, but as an intellectual property thief.
“It was horrifying,” Robillard said in an interview.
“They were using this pressure, this lever that I hadn’t even thought about before.
And it felt like a very upside-down experience.”
Using trade secret law to fend off worker complaints is so far a niche strategy.
In interviews, some attorneys said they’d never seen it deployed.
But others have witnessed it multiple times and said its use was on the upswing.
A beverage company’s secret recipe.
An innovative manufacturing process.
A social media platform’s proprietary feed algorithm.
A sales team’s closely guarded customer list.
It’s now being deployed by employers facing claims of discrimination or wrongdoing.
But when it comes to defending a retaliatory counterclaim, many require their clients to pay up front.
Mostly, the cases settled.
“Did all these lawyers go to a conference we didn’t hear about?”
One such suit was filed by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
Bill Moreau, a chiropractor, was promoted by the committee to vice president of sports medicine in 2017.
In May 2019, he was fired.
But Moreau believed he was fired in retaliation for what he described as whistleblower complaints.
He sued the following year alleging wrongful discharge.
His approach to document handling soon made him a target.
His lawyers said in court filings that this was common practice among the committee’s employees.
After his termination, he let his attorneys review some of them.
The case ground on for three years before reaching a settlement.
These cases, he said, “can often crush employees into silence.”
When someone speaks out against an employer, this entire digital history can be scrutinized for use against them.
“Those aren’t circumstances that lead to the best decision-making.”
In practice, the provision has sometimes failed to protect even the most fastidious would-be whistleblowers.
(The case was later settled.)
One Georgia case appeared to be exactly what the whistleblower exemption was designed for.
Young’s attorney moved to have the case dismissed under the whistleblower clause.
It turned out Young’s whistleblower claims had merit.
Argos' case against Young was halted only when the Department of Justice’s antitrust division intervened.
“There are many reasons an employer would not litigate every infraction employees commit,” the majority wrote.
His claim was dismissed, too.
“It’s a huge piece of leverage over an employee,” the San Francisco attorney said.
“On the defense side, it’s one of the first things you look at.”
Sometimes that threat alone has been enough to prompt a worker to abandon their claim.
In addition, many trade secret cases may be litigated entirely in private arbitration, out of sight.
If Boja would drop his claim, Moran recalled, TA would agree not to bring the case.
(TA and its attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.)
“He didn’t know that he was going to get fired,” Moran said.
Before Boja had time to consider the offer, Moran said, TA filed suit.
“Dealing with TA’s case against me has been emotionally difficult,” Boja said.
“I have trouble sleeping or focusing on anything else.”
Shortly before the company placed him on leave to investigate, Talton downloaded a raft of internal documents.
Amanda Taggart, a Carta spokesperson, flatly denied that he’d offered to return the documents.
Court filings show that the litigation process agonizing for Talton.
“A good job offer was withdrawn.
He has not been able to get another.”
She also reported Sharma to the police for striking her, and he was convicted of harassment that May.
The company counterattacked, suing her on hacking charges in April, and later added a trade secrets claim.
The company’s claims hung on a thin thread.
The company sued Badaczewski too.
The result: Even when a company’s trade secrets claim fails, it can exact financial harm.
For Robillard, the Oregon engineer, the legal process was grueling.
His attempts to have the trade secrets claims against him dismissed through summary judgment failed.
He sat for depositions and turned over reams of old files for discovery.
“That isolation is a big factor,” he said.
“Paranoia is real, because you don’t know who’s looking or watching.”
All claims were dismissed with prejudice.
Opal agreed to pay a settlement of about $220,000.
As a technology company, protecting our intellectual property is both necessary and appropriate."
“But it was not a financially lucrative engagement in the slightest.”
Rob Priceis a senior correspondent for Business Insider and writes features and investigations about the technology industry.
His Signal number is+1 650-636-6268, and his email isrprice@businessinsider.com.
