Delaware Business Litigation Report

Court of Chancery Allows Employer To Recover Its Confidential Information From Former Employee's Computer

Rockwell Automation, Inc. v. Kall, C.A. No. 526-N, 2005 WL 2266592 (Del. Ch. September 9, 2005). Plaintiff Rockwell Automation, Inc. filed complaint against Defendant, a former employee of Plaintiff, to obtain documents containing its confidential and proprietary information. Plaintiff sought to recover documents containing confidential and proprietary information that were stored on computer hardware that Plaintiff had supplied to and retrieved from Defendant. Defendant argued that if Plaintiff could access documents containing confidential and proprietary information on the computer hardware, it could also access personal and potentially privileged communications Defendant had with others. The Court concluded that Plaintiff was entitled to full access to proprietary information stored on the computers pursuant to its employment agreement with Defendant. The Court did not determine whether Plaintiff could gain access to Defendant's personal or privileged documents because that issue was not framed by the complaint. Instead, the Court held that if Plaintiff wished to review its proprietary documents stored on the computers, it had to retain a third-party service provider to retrieve and review all of the documents. The third-party service provider would turn over all documents containing proprietary or confidential information to Defendant. The third-party service provider would not provide documents or data from the computers available to anyone else without the agreement of Defendant and Plaintiff or a tribunal's order. Share