PA Law Weekly: Kang on CFAA and its impact on employer-employee litigation
January 30, 2016
Throughout 2016, Edward Kang will be a regular contributor to the Pennsylvania Law Weekly and The Legal Intelligencer on civil litigation issues impacting attorneys throughout the state. This month he writes on the topic of the CFAA and its impact on employer-employee litigation.
Changing jobs has become the norm in the modern age. Gone are the days where one spent her entire career at a single company. With more and more people changing jobs, often joining forces with competitors who offer more money or better opportunity, many employers end up unhappy, even angry.
To that end, one careless (and most times innocuous) error made by an employee before leaving for a competitor may cause severe repercussions. The employer can use a seemingly harmless action—for instance, the employee forwarding a work email to his personal email account before leaving the company—to allege that the employee stole the company’s trade secrets or confidential information. As part of a legal offensive against the former employee, a hard-line employer would likely turn to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 18 USC 1030. This could be very bad news for the former employee because, as discussed below, the CFAA requires a minimal showing of damage or “loss” for a claim to survive, and many courts take an expansive view of the types of conduct that violate the CFAA.
Reprinted with permission from the February 2 edition of The Legal Intelligencer”© 2016 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com