Professors Joseph Fishman and Deepa Varadarajan have argued trade secret law should be more like copyright law. Specifically, they argue trade secret law should not prevent people (especially departing employees who obtained the trade secret lawfully within the scope of their employment) from making new end uses of trade secret information, so long as it's not a foreseeable use of the underlying information and is generally outside of the plaintiff's market. The authors made this controversial argument at last year's IP Scholars conference at Berkeley Law, and in their new article in University of Pennsylvania Law Review, called "Similar Secrets."
My full response to Similar Secrets is now published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online. It is called: "Should Dissimilar Uses Of Trade Secrets Be Actionable?" The response explains in detail why I think the answer is, as a general matter, YES. It can be downloaded at: https://www.pennlawreview.com/online/168-U-Pa-L-Rev-Online-78.pdf
