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We've been blogging about this trade secrets case for a while, see here: http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.com/2009/07/former-citadel-employees-defend.html. You'll recall that Citadel, a huge Chicago hedge fund, has sued some former employees for breach of their noncompete covenants and theft of trade secrets of certain kinds of high-speed trading.

Well, Reuters is reporting that the trial court issued an injunction against the former employees and their new company, enforcing their noncompete agreements and judicially shutting them down until mid-November. The court did not, even though Citadel asked the court to do so, extend the noncompete for additional time in light of the former employees' prior breach. The report does not identify the injunction bond required by the Court - but we'll look into that and report back.

BUT - the singularly fascinating aspect of this case for this purposes of this report is the defense raised by the key departed employee ( Mikhail "Misha" Malyshev, pictured above) to explain why his hard drive was wiped clean of forensic evidence, apparently after a court order was entered requiring the preservation of all electronic evidence. His defense? I am addicted to hard-core internet pornography and wiped my hard-drive clean to save myself the embarrassment of being examined about the forensic details of my addiction.

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