Cynthia Bavaso Case Summary

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The plaintiff has asked us to evaluate Cynthia Bavaso’s liability for trade secret misappropriation. Under the Illinois Trade Secret Act (ITSA), to make a claim for trade secret misappropriation the plaintiff must establish that: a trade secret existed; the secret was misappropriated through improper acquisition, disclosure, or use; and the owner of the trade secret was damaged by the misappropriation. 765 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 1065/2(b) (2010). We will examine the defendant’s actions in acquiring her former employer’s confidential customer list; Bavaso’s potential breach of the Statement of Confidentiality; and if Bavaso’s actions caused irreparable harm to the plaintiff. The first issue to be assessed is whether the confidential customer …show more content…

Delta Med. Systems, Inc. v. Mid-America Med. Systems, Inc., 772 N.E.2d 768 (Ill. App. Ct. 2002). In Stampede Tool v. May, the plaintiff contends it must develop customer relationships that require a substantial amount of time, effort and money because the list is not readily available from a telephone book, library, special directories, or any other publicly available sources. Stampede Tool Warehouse, Inc. v. May, 651 N.E.2d 209 (Ill. App. 1 Dist. 1995). See Gillis Associated Industries v. CARI-ALL, Inc., 564 N.E.2d 881 (Ill. App. 1 Dist. 1990) (the customer list represents clear economic value, both actual and potential, to the plaintiff as well as its competitors). Unfortunately, there are not enough facts provided about how the plaintiff’s customer data was compiled, how laborious the efforts may have been to create it and any associated costs. Without that, it is difficult to determine if the contacts could have been culled from a journal or even the yellow pages. Though the defendant downloaded the Microsoft Outlook contacts list, we have no way of knowing that all the contacts are the plaintiff’s proprietary data. It is possible that the defendant has personal contact information or independently developed contacts on the list as well. This could also apply to the Touch Base contact list. All that we know is that the defendant downloaded and printed the contact information. We do not know definitively if the customer list and other business data were contained in Outlook or Touch Base. It is possible the data was retained in another location. The only certainty presented by the facts is that the defendant is contacting some of the plaintiff’s current customers. Another unknown is the defendant’s prior relationship with customers on the list. She may be contacting customers that she

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