It’s the policy of an increasing number of news outlets to retain ownership of the professional
social media accounts of their reporters. In the first case of its kind in the United States, one media company took a former employee to court over the question of ownership.
Tag: Trade Secret
By: Brette Trost*
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In 2016, Christopher Correa, a former employee of the St. Louis Cardinals, was sentenced to forty-six months in prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when he accessed a Houston Astros database without authorization. However, these were not the only charges Correa could have faced. This note uses the Correa case to illustrate how the Economic Espionage Act can be used to prevent trade secret theft in Major League Baseball. More specifically, this note asserts that the sabermetric data systems used by MLB teams to evaluate and track players are legally protectable trade secrets. Furthermore, due to the fluid nature of the baseball analytics talent pool and barriers to civil prosecution inherent in baseball’s structure, the Economic Espionage Act presents the best way to combat the misappropriation of this information. The note goes on to distinguish between teams’ off-field and on-field tactics and discusses how, if at all, this framework should apply to the collection and use of biometric data.
By Charles Cronin*
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By Joy Y. Xiang*
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