Judging Solicitation Behavior From British Confidential Law

Since the United Kingdom has over a hundred years of Case Law, the EnglishCourt has formed a special system to judge trade secret infringement behavior. Interms of soliciting clients behavior, there is no clear regulation in Statute to explainand regulate it. While the English High Court has now ruled that solicitation generallyoccurs if an ex-employee directly or indirectly requests, persuades or encouragesclients of their former employer to transfer their business to their new employer. Assoliciting former clients could through various of forms, it is difficult to identifysolicitation behavior in practical life. This dissertation focus on the method of judginginducement behavior in the United Kingdom through a series of classic cases.In the fist chapter, by analyzing famous case Robb v.Green,the dissertation willfocus on the basic definition and theories of solicitation. While solicitation is theemployee who has just left the employer uses various of ways to persuade formercustomer to transfer their business to a new company. In addition, the second andthird sections of this chapter will discuss the origin and development of solicitation.While in the last section, the connection between solicitation behavior and trade secretinfringement will be clarified through analyze three common defend: reasonable useof trade secret,no-responsibility of departing employee and the memorization defense. The second chapter will explain the special judging model of solicitationbehavior. Since the English Case Law rules that there are a special model to judgeinducement behavior:“Premise+Intention+Persuation+Other factors”. First of all, thecustomer list which has involved with trade secret infringement cases must be a tradesecret and the employees must have responsible for their employer. Only satisfyingthese requirements, the judgment of solicitation would be meaningful. Secondly, thedeparting employee must have specific intention to induce their former clients. Underthis circumstances, quiting the job cannot be a strong proof to demonstrate theemployees have purpose to induce customer. Since there are thousands of reasonscould cause an employee quit his job,more specific intention must be showed. Thirdly,as a center rule of the High Court,the departing employees must conduct“persuade”behavior. At the end of this chapter, the dissertation will discuss twobackward rules which could identify solicitation behavior. The rules are “InitialContact Theory” and “Reasonable Declaration Right”.The last chapter will emphasis the outside influence which could change thejudging result of solicitation behavior. While through analyzing non-solicitationagreements, shareholder responsibilities and the springboard injunction, this part willuse classic cases to justify the influence. Since every case has its special features,these outside factor should not be ignore. It could be suggested that only combing allinfluencing factors and the basic rules could be an appropriate model to identifysolicitation behavior.