Operating under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, the Central District of California denied summary judgment in favor of the defendant and found that there was a material issue of fact regarding whether LinkedIn contacts that a former employee made while working for Cellular Accessories For Less (“Cellular”) are Cellular’s protectable trade secrets. The defendant argued that the LinkedIn contacts are not a trade secret because “Cellular encouraged its employees to create and use LinkedIn accounts, and [the defendant’s] LinkedIn contacts would have been ‘viewable to any other contact he has on LinkedIn.’” On the other hand, Plaintiff argued that the LinkedIn contacts are only available “to the degree that the user chooses to share it.”
The Central District found that the parties’ statements did not make it sufficiently clear whether and to what degree defendant’s LinkedIn contacts were public and if so, whether this was done with Cellular’s explicit or implicit permission. The court held that this dispute regarding the publicity of LinkedIn contacts was an issue of fact which a jury must decide.
For a primer on the development of social media and trade secrets click here.