Sam, your salesmen, quits.  A competitor hires him.  Your small business has no non-compete or confidentiality agreements, but you reminded employees regularly that you assembled client lists through years of work that contain notes about clients and best approaches to each.

You want to avoid a trial, but what should you do?

First, we'll send a letter to Sam, describing the facts that support your claim that the list is a trade secret - how you compiled it, your reasonable secrecy measures, your "confidential" label, and access limitations - and why you think he's using it. We'll ask him to stop and return all copies to you.  Of course, he'll either ignore the letter, or claim it's not secret, or that he's not using it.

So, a letter goes to Sam's new boss, Betty, explaining that Sam has so many clients because he took information unlawfully from you. Now Betty is on notice that she must make Sam abandon the list or she may also be liable. Betty doesn't hire a lawyer, so she just replies that Sam told her he didn't take the list, he just made notes from it in his notebook and, anyway, there are only a limited number of potential clients in the region. What Betty doesn't understand is that it's not