The Internet also makes it easy to copy and transfer the secrets. But The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 now makes theft of trade secrets a federal criminal offense and covers stolen, appropriated, copied, downloaded or altered information. There's a very fine line between general knowledge and knowledge acquired doing a job. There are related issues for current, future, past employers and employees. Employment and non-competition agreements can limit job movement but can also limit the right to fire someone and can be unenforceable in some states.
Confidentiality agreements list the type of information considered sensitive.
When you pay people to develop technology, you have to spell out your claim to their work. It's not good enough to assume that employees know trade secrets are confidential. They should be labeled that way in documents, memos, even e-mails. Calif. However, Payne warns that being overly zealous and marking every document confidential can backfire.