If someone misappropriates your trade secrets in Texas, you can sue under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA) or the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act. You can ask a court for an injunction to stop the use quickly, plus damages. Speed matters. The first two weeks often decide whether the information can be contained.
What counts as a trade secret?
Almost any business information that has value because competitors don’t know it: customer lists with pricing and contact details, source code, formulas, manufacturing processes, financial models, and pricing strategies. The key requirement is that you took reasonable measures to keep it secret. Courts look for confidentiality agreements, access controls, password protection, marked documents and exit procedures. Information you shared freely is hard to protect later.
What does misappropriation look like in Austin?
In a tech-heavy market, the most common pattern is a departing employee or co-founder. They download the customer database or code repository in the weeks before resigning, then show up at a competitor or launch a rival company. Other cases involve former business partners, vendors, or a failed acquisition where the buyer saw confidential data.
What remedies are available?
- Temporary restraining order and temporary injunction to stop use or disclosure, and to require return of the information. TROs can be obtained within days.
- Actual damages for your losses, plus the wrongdoer’s unjust enrichment, or a reasonable royalty.
- Exemplary damages of up to twice the actual damages for willful and malicious misappropriation.
- Attorney’s fees in cases of willful and malicious misappropriation.
TUTSA claims generally must be brought within three years of when the misappropriation was, or reasonably should have been, discovered.
What should I do the moment I suspect theft?
- Preserve the evidence. Don’t wipe or reissue the departing employee’s laptop or phone. Have a forensic examiner image it.
- Check access logs for large downloads, emails to personal accounts, and USB or cloud transfers.
- Review the agreements: confidentiality, invention assignment, noncompete and non-solicitation.
- Send a cease-and-desist letter, but coordinate it with your lawyer. Sometimes it’s better to seek a TRO first.
- Move quickly. Delay undercuts the argument that you need emergency relief.
Do I also need a noncompete?
It helps, but it’s a separate tool. Texas enforces employee noncompetes that are tied to an otherwise enforceable agreement — often the employer’s promise to give the employee confidential information — and are reasonable in time, geography and scope. Trade secret law protects the information itself even without a noncompete.
From our case files
- Former employee took confidential client information. We sued and settled with a former employee who violated his noncompete and used the company’s confidential client information (2014).
- Austin biomedical startup. We sued and settled with a departing co-founder and officer to enforce his noncompete (2009).
- The other side of the table. We defended a software executive sued by a major U.S. software company over a noncompete; the case settled with our client paying nothing (2008). We also cancelled a noncompete covering several departing employees of a rival software firm (2007).
Client names are withheld for confidentiality. Every case turns on its own facts, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. See more representative results.
The Burk Law Firm represents Texas businesses in trade secret and confidentiality disputes. Call (512) 306-9828.
Related: How Does a Business Lawsuit Work in Texas? · What Can You Recover for Breach of Contract in Texas? · Is My Noncompete Enforceable in Texas?
This article is general information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.