Monthly Archives: July 2013

            An interesting article by Jeffrey Spear that appeared in the New Hampshire Bar News earlier this month shows that the federal district court in New Hampshire is struggling with the same question as the district court in Massachusetts: What is the proper interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”)?  The CFAA, as I have mentioned many times on this blog, is a federal statute that has been interpreted by various courts in essentially one of two ways: (1) an employee can be liable to an employer if the employee takes information from the employer’s computer system to a competitor,… More

Earlier this week, I participated in the Boston Bar Association’s Fifth Annual Symposium on Employee Non-Compete Agreements, Trade Secrets and Job Creation.  The panelists included Senator Will Brownsberger and Representative Lori Ehrlich, the sponsors of the currently pending bill that would focus noncompete reform efforts on limiting the duration of noncompetes.  More information about that proposal can be found here and here.  The panel also included Russell Beck,… More

            Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reported two weeks ago on a very interesting decision from the District of Massachusetts by Judge Timothy Hillman that interprets the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”).  There is now a split in how judges within the district interpret the CFAA, and this split can affect whether employers’ CFAA claims against employees survive.  Both Michael Rosen and I offer some commentary in the article, … More

            Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reported last month on a Massachusetts federal court decision that barred former employees from suing their former employer for unpaid overtime, commissions, and bonuses after a trial over the employees’ noncompete agreements because the claims either should have been brought against the employer in the first lawsuit or were litigated as defenses at the trial.  I offer some analysis in the article, and would only add that the procedural doctrines of collateral estoppel and compulsory counterclaims that the judge relied on are not new,… More