§ 134A.003.Injunctive Relief

The injunction provision, and its first sentence contains the limit that matters most to departing employees.

Actual or threatened misappropriation may be enjoined — note that a threat suffices — if the order does not prohibit a person from using general knowledge, skill, and experience that person acquired during employment.

That proviso is the whole balance of trade secret law. An employee carries away everything they learned, and an injunction that reached their competence rather than the employer’s secrets would function as a non-compete without one having been agreed.

Drawing the line between a protectable secret and general skill is the recurring question in these cases, and the section requires it to be drawn in the order itself.

Subsection (a-1) ends the injunction when the secret does: on application, an injunction shall be terminated when the trade secret has ceased to exist — but may continue for an additional reasonable period to eliminate the commercial advantage the misappropriation would otherwise produce.

That is the head-start principle. Once information is public the secret is gone, but a defendant who reached the market early because they took it should not keep that lead.

Subsection (b) supplies the royalty alternative in exceptional circumstances — conditioning future use on a reasonable royalty rather than prohibiting it, for no longer than use could have been prohibited. The section names the paradigm case: a material and prejudicial change of position before knowing of the misappropriation.

Subsection (c) allows affirmative acts to be compelled, so an order can require a defendant to do something — return materials, delete files — rather than only to stop.