“Confidentiality In the normal course of your employment with the Employer you may have access to and be entrusted with confidential information which is of substantial commercial value to the Employer and potentially to any other business operating in the same field. To protect the confidentiality of this information and the legitimate business interests of the Employer you agree not at any time, whether during or following your employment (unless expressly so authorised by the Employer in writing or as a necessary part of the performance of your duties, or as required by law), to disclose to any person or knowingly permit or enable any person to acquire or to make use of any such confidential information for any purpose in a manner which may cause loss or damage to the Employer.”
“I acknowledge receipt of my Statement of Terms and Conditions of Employment and a copy of the Employee Handbook. I confirm that I have read and understand the contents of both of these documents and accept that together they form my contract of employment.”
“COMPUTER POLICY Software … Software issued by the Company for your use is licensed to the Company and is protected by copyright law. You must not make copies of, or distribute software that has been copied. Passwords To access various software programs you may have been given a user name and password. These passwords are personal to you. Do not write them down where they may be seen by anyone else. … You should not therefore allow anyone else to use your access rights and password. Email … Confidential information about or relating to the Company should not be transmitted via email unless done so in the course of business. … You must not distribute sensitive commercial data concerning the Company to competitive sources. Doing so may result in disciplinary action leading to your dismissal without notice for gross misconduct. Inappropriate use … Examples of inappropriate use include, but are not limited to … (e) Downloading or disseminating copyright materials. (f) Disclosing confidential information. … (h) Copying or downloading software. PROPERTY AND EQUIPMENT Return of Company property Upon termination of your employment for whatever reason, you must return to your line manager all property belonging to the Company including but not limited to, Company vehicle, computer, equipment, tools, uniforms, keys, entry passes, records, documents, accounts, letters, papers (including all copies, summaries and extracts) within your possession or control belonging to the affairs and business of the Company and its customer.”
“Confidentiality During the course of your employment you will be party to information concerning the Company, its products and customers. Such information is to be regarded as strictly confidential. You may not disclose or discuss with any other person outside the Company information relating to its business including product information or matters relating to security. Any breach of this condition will render you liable to disciplinary action, which may result in dismissal. … I have read, understood and am willing to abide by the terms and conditions laid down in the Employee Handbook and accept that they form an integral part of this Contract of Employment.”
“Following the termination of your employment you shall not: … 4. Use or disclose any confidential information relating to the business or financial affairs of the company to any individual, firm, company or other body so long as the information remains confidential. … Further terms and conditions relating to your employment can be found in the Employee Handbook. The content of the Employee Handbook is to be read in conjunction with this statement, which together form your contract of employment.”
“…any information regarding pricing structures and customers must be kept confidential and should not be disclosed to your new employer for your gain. Secondly, the company considers its pricing structures to be a ‘trade secret’ and you are therefore subject to an implied duty not to misuse trade secrets post-employment. This means that you cannot reveal any information about our pricing structures to customers and/or your new employer. We consider revealing details about our pricing structure to be a misuse of information you gained whilst working for us. Finally, may I also point out unlawfully obtaining or accessing personal data is a criminal offence under the Data Protection Act and this extends to taking client records that contain personal information to a new job without permission. This information belongs to Weiss Technik and absolutely must not be used by you in your new job. I therefore ask you to cease and desist contacting our company clients using information that you have gained by working for us.”
“Be careful sending emails to your personal address they can be traced sometimes.”
“I randomly do it by mistake as it automatically picks up my personal one if sending off the service … So I can cover that if anyone says. Even others done it so I mix it up so there’s no continuity … I’m not that dull X”
“Tony, last week I found in the back office (testing area) Chris doing something with his laptop and using memory sticks, does he have any memory sticks to hand over if he does please send them to me directly.”
“(2) In the absence of any express term, the obligations of the employee in respect of the use and disclosure of information are the subject of implied terms. (3) While the employee remains in the employment of the employer the obligations are included in the implied term which imposes a duty of good faith or fidelity on the employee. For the purposes of the present appeal it is not necessary to consider the precise limits of this implied term, but it may be noted: (a) that the extent of the duty of good faith will vary according to the nature of the contract (see Vokes Ltd v Heather, 62 R.P.C. 135); (b) that the duty of good faith will be broken if an employee makes or copies a list of the customers of the employer for use after his employment ends or deliberately memorises such a list, even though, except in special circumstances, there is no general restriction on an ex-employee canvassing or doing business with customers of his former employer … (4) The implied term which imposes an obligation on the employeeas to his conduct after the determination of the employment is more restricted in its scope than that which imposes a general duty of good faith. It is clear that the obligation not to use or disclose information may cover secret processes of manufacture such as chemical formulae …, or designs or special methods of construction … and other information which is of a sufficiently high degree of confidentiality as to amount to a trade secret. The obligation does not extend, however, to cover all information which is given to or acquired by the employee while in his employment, and in particular may not cover information which is only “confidential” in the sense that an unauthorised disclosure of such information to a third party while the employment subsisted would be a clear breach of the duty of good faith … (5) In order to determine whether any particular item of information falls within the implied term so as to prevent its use or disclosure by an employee after his employment has ceased, it is necessary to consider all the circumstances of the case. We are satisfied that the following matters are among those to which attention must be paid: (a) The nature of the employment. Thus employment in a capacity where ‘confidential’ material is habitually handled may impose a high obligation of confidentiality because the employee can be expected to realise its sensitive nature to a greater extent than if he were employed in a capacity where such material reaches him only occasionally or incidentally. (b) The nature of the information itself. In our judgment the information will only be protected if it can properly be classed as a trade secret or as material which, while not properly to be described as a trade secret, is in all the circumstances of such a highly confidential nature as to require the same protection as a trade secret eo nomine … (c) Whether the employer impressed on the employee the confidentiality of the information. Thus, though an employer cannot prevent the use or disclosure merely by telling the employee that certain information is confidential, the attitude of the employer towards the information provides evidence which may assist in determining whether or not the information can properly be regarded as a trade secret … (d) Whether the relevant information can be easily isolated from other information which the employee is free to use or disclose. In Printers & Finishers Ltd v Holloway[1965] R.P.C. 239, Cross J. considered the protection which might be afforded to information which had been memorised by an ex-employee. He put on one side the memorising of a formula or a list of customers or what had been said (obviously in confidence) at a particular meeting, and continued, at p. 256: ‘The employee might well not realise that the feature or expedient in question was in fact peculiar to his late employer’s process and factory; but even if he did, such knowledge is not readily separable from his general knowledge of the flock printing process and his acquired skill in manipulating a flock printing plant, and I do not think that any man of average intelligence and honesty would think that there was anything improper in his putting his memory of particular features of his late employer’s plant at the disposal of his new employer.’ For our part we would not regard the separability of the information in question as being conclusive, but the fact that the alleged “confidential” information is part of a package and that the remainder of the package is not confidential is likely to throw light on whether the information in question is really a trade secret.” (a) The nature of the employment. Thus employment in a capacity where ‘confidential’ material is habitually handled may impose a high obligation of confidentiality because the employee can be expected to realise its sensitive nature to a greater extent than if he were employed in a capacity where such material reaches him only occasionally or incidentally. (b) The nature of the information itself. In our judgment the information will only be protected if it can properly be classed as a trade secret or as material which, while not properly to be described as a trade secret, is in all the circumstances of such a highly confidential nature as to require the same protection as a trade secret eo nomine … (c) Whether the employer impressed on the employee the confidentiality of the information. Thus, though an employer cannot prevent the use or disclosure merely by telling the employee that certain information is confidential, the attitude of the employer towards the information provides evidence which may assist in determining whether or not the information can properly be regarded as a trade secret … (d) Whether the relevant information can be easily isolated from other information which the employee is free to use or disclose. In Printers & Finishers Ltd v Holloway[1965] R.P.C. 239, Cross J. considered the protection which might be afforded to information which had been memorised by an ex-employee. He put on one side the memorising of a formula or a list of customers or what had been said (obviously in confidence) at a particular meeting, and continued, at p. 256: ‘The employee might well not realise that the feature or expedient in question was in fact peculiar to his late employer’s process and factory; but even if he did, such knowledge is not readily separable from his general knowledge of the flock printing process and his acquired skill in manipulating a flock printing plant, and I do not think that any man of average intelligence and honesty would think that there was anything improper in his putting his memory of particular features of his late employer’s plant at the disposal of his new employer.’ For our part we would not regard the separability of the information in question as being conclusive, but the fact that the alleged “confidential” information is part of a package and that the remainder of the package is not confidential is likely to throw light on whether the information in question is really a trade secret.”
“In my judgment, three elements are normally required if, apart from contract, a case of breach of confidence is to succeed. First, the information itself … must ‘have the necessary quality of confidence about it’. Secondly, that information must have been imparted in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence. Thirdly, there must be an unauthorised use of that information to the detriment of the party communicating it.”
“68. If confidence applies to a defendant who adventitiously, but without authorisation, obtains information in respect of which he must have appreciated that the claimant had an expectation of privacy, it must, a fortiori, extend to a defendant who intentionally, and without authorisation, takes steps to obtain such information. It would seem to us to follow that intentionally obtaining such information, secretly and knowing that the claimant reasonably expects it to be private, is itself a breach of confidence. … 69. In our view, it would be a breach of confidence for a defendant, without the authority of the claimant, to examine, or to make, retain, or supply copies to a third party of, a document whose contents are, and were (or ought to have been) appreciated by the defendant to be, confidential to the claimant. It is of the essence of the claimant’s right to confidentiality that he can choose whether, and, if so, to whom and in what circumstances and on what terms, to reveal the information which has the protection of the confidence. It seems to us, as a matter of principle, that, again in the absence of any defence on the particular facts, a claimant who establishes a right of confidence in certain information contained in a document should be able to restrain any threat by an unauthorised defendant to look at, copy, distribute any copies of, or to communicate, or utilise the contents of the document (or any copy), and also be able to enforce the return (or destruction) of any such document or copy. Without the court having the power to grant such relief, the information will, through the unauthorised act of the defendant, either lose its confidential character, or will at least be at risk of doing so. The claimant should not be at risk, through the unauthorised act of the defendant, of having the confidentiality of the information lost, or even potentially lost.”
“as a general rule, it is in the public interest that confidences should be respected, and the encouragement of such respect may in itself constitute a sufficient ground for recognising and enforcing the obligation of confidence even where the confider can point to no specific detriment to himself … So I would think it a sufficient detriment to the confider that information given in confidence is to be disclosed to persons whom he would prefer not to know of it, even though the disclosure to him would not be harmful to him in any positive way.”
“the confider may have an interest in the information being kept confidential, regardless of whether disclosure would be positively harmful to it, for reasons which may be perfectly understandable (and which would be understood by any reasonable person in the position of the confidant). If so, for the reasons suggested by Lord Keith in the Spycatcher case, that should be sufficient to found a cause of action; and the question whether unauthorised disclosure in such circumstances is considered to involve ‘detriment’ is an exercise in semantics.”
“I stumbled upon a Contour package complete with Dongle today at DSTL which has found its way into my van, we can use this for another customer.”
“Please find a copy of some previous/current passwords for both Contour and UptoDate software packages stored in the following directory: Dropbox\Engineers – Documents\Passwords\ As with Contour, we know we can backdate the PC to activate the passwords we know for that time period.”
“Q. You see, the situation is, Mr Jones, that this client is an example of how you have taken business from Weiss, isn’t it, by stealing and misusing their internal information? A. Yes.”
“first, there must be a contract, second, there must be a breach of that contract, thirdly, the conduct of the relevant defendant must have been such as to procure or induce that breach, fourthly, the relevant defendant must have known of the existence of the relevant term in the contract or turned a blind eye to the existence of such a term and, fifthly, the relevant defendant must have actually realised that the conduct, which was being induced or procured, would result in a breach of the term.”
“Q. … is it really your evidence that you can’t offer any explanation to the court how this and hundreds of other documents from Weiss that are clearly sensitive, commercially sensitive, have ended up in your company’s possession? Is that really your evidence? You have no idea? A. I have no idea. They’ve obviously come on board, but I’ve no idea how they’re on there. They’ve obviously come with a USB stick or a drive device of some kind. Q. Because you asked them to, didn’t you, Mr Jones? A. No, no.”
“Q. … She’s alerting you to a potential business opportunity. A. Yes. Q. Which she had no business doing, did she? You knew what she was doing was wrong? A. Yes. Q. … So what you’re encouraging her to do is to overprice the Weiss offer or quote so that it increases the chance of you getting the business? A. Yes. Q. That’s what you’re asking her to do, isn’t it? A. There’s history behind that, but, yes, in the light of that sentence, yes. Q. And you knew that was wrong as well, didn’t you? A. Yes. … Q. … what I’ve just shown you here is … an example of you and Mrs Whitfield deliberately trying to divert business from Weiss to your company in a way that’s completely improper? A. Yes.”
“Q. … you asked Mr Davies for the password more than once, didn’t you? A. For the Simpac, yes. Q. According to Mr Davies you asked him in late June 2018 by text message; is that right? A. Yes. Q. And you also asked him in July 2018? A. Yes. Q. And again, those are both examples, aren’t they, of you asking Weiss employees to do things which you knew were wrong? A. Yes.”
“… the resources used to seek out existing independent materials and collect them in the database, and not to the resources used for the creation as such of independent materials. The purpose of the protection by the sui generis right provided for by the directive is to promote the establishment of storage and processing systems for existing information and not the creation of materials capable of being collected subsequently in a database.”
“35. … the fact that the creation of a database is linked to the exercise of a principal activity in which the person creating the database is also the creator of the materials contained in the database does not, as such, preclude that person from claiming the protection of the sui generis right, provided that he establishes that the obtaining of those materials, their verification or their presentation … required substantial investment in quantitative or qualitative terms, which was independent of the resources used to create those materials. 36. Thus, although the search for data and the verification of their accuracy at the time a database is created do not require the maker of that database to use particular resources because the data are those he created and are available to him, the fact remains that the collection of those data, their systematic or methodical arrangement in the database, the organisation of their individual accessibility and the verification of their accuracy throughout the operation of the database may require substantial investment in quantitative or qualitative terms …”