Intellectual Property Law

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, PNC has sued Wachovia and is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the theft of its trade secrets, including valuable employee and customer relationships, confidential information and goodwill. Read the article here.

According to the court filing, Wachovia is attempting to persuade PNC’s employees to come work for it and bring their existing clients by claiming in a letter that PNC Investments’ parent company “is exiting the retail brokerage business.”

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PNC claims Wachovia officials provided targeted employees with a “blueprint” detailing how they should disclose confidential and proprietary PNC business information while “surreptitiously” working for both companies for two months.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out and if the allegations of PNC that Wachovia provided a “blueprint” to trade secret theft are true.