Abstract
Companies and individuals often fail to take steps to protect their business information, trusting their employees and trading partners to keep it confidential. Failure to take affirmative secrecy measures robs business information of trade secret status under the Illinois Trade Secrets Act (ITSA), but Illinois law protected information not rising to the level of a trade secret under a variety of theories before the ITSA was passed in 1987. Surprisingly, the Illinois Appellate Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit have construed Section 8(a) of the ITSA as abolishing all non-trade secret claims, even though Section 8(b)(2) of the ITSA expressly preserves such non-trade secret claims. This Article argues that these Illinois state and federal appellate decisions are mistaken; they ignore Section 8(b)(2) and fail to follow appropriate statutory construction canons that operate to preserve non-trade secret claims. This Article therefore urges the Illinois Supreme Court to break its 30-year silence on this preemption question and to reject these cases in favor of a broad construction of Section 8(b)(2) saving non-trade secret claims.
Recommended Citation
William L. Schaller,
Illinois Trade Secret Law: The Peculiar Problem of Preemption,
43
S. Ill. U. L.J.
243
(2019).
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/siulj/vol43/iss2/1