Mergers and acquisition bring about profound risk for the loss or theft of proprietary information, with he added complications of uncatalogued trade secrets and departing employees with deep process knowledge only increasing these risks. This session will discuss practical strategies that in-house teams are implementing to mitigate these risks and allow for smooth M&A proceedings.

• Integration of M&A systems to prevent risk during acquisition, and balance restrictive covenants.
• How to mitigate the risk posed by departing employees with deep process knowledge.
• Balancing enforcement with workforce mobility and ensuring that morale and professionality is maintained.
• Strategies for joint development M&A.

Beyond legal risk, trade secret disputes can result in catastrophic knock-on effects throughout a business: they can disrupt operations, drain technical teams, and affect investor confidence for years. This fireside chat looks at how in-house teams manage trade secret litigation when the stakes extend far beyond the courtroom.

• How litigation strategy changes when trade secret disputes become ‘bet-the-business’ matters.
• Managing discovery scope, technical witness fatigue, and internal disruption over multi-year disputes.
• Navigating investor relations, disclosure obligations, and activist pressure during ongoing litigation.
• Decision-making around settlement, arbitration, or escalation when business survival is at stake.

Strategic collaborations are increasingly central to innovation, particularly in life sciences and technology, where companies rely on partnerships for research, development, and manufacturing. This session explores the trade secret considerations that arise across the full lifecycle of a collaboration, from early discussions and deal negotiation to active partnerships and potential disputes.

• Trade secret strategy during early deal exploration and negotiating terms that protect the ownership of know-how, confidentiality obligations, and information access.
• Offensive and defensive considerations when collaborations lead to litigation or misappropriation claims.
• Managing trade secrets during active collaborations such as joint R&D, licensing, or manufacturing partnerships.
• Trade secret risks when collaborations fail, including “busted deals,” employee mobility, and disputes over the use of shared know-how.

Trade secrets now sit far beyond R&D and the legal team. They run through data systems, manufacturing processes, vendor relationships, AI tools, and everyday employee workflows. As a result, effective trade secret protection increasingly depends on coordination between legal, HR, IT, security, engineering, and operations. This session focuses on how companies are adapting their internal structures to protect trade secrets as they spread across the organisation.

• Why trade secrets are no longer confined to technical teams or formal IP portfolios.
• How data systems, collaboration tools, and AI are expanding where trade secrets live.
• The role of HR, IT, security, and operations in supporting trade secret protection.
• Practical examples of cross-functional models that improve protection without slowing the business.

When trade secrets are misappropriated, companies face an early decision that can define the entire outcome of a dispute: whether to pursue civil litigation, seek arbitration, or involve the Department of Justice. This fireside session is led by a senior DOJ official and focuses on how these decisions are made in practice, including what the DOJ looks for when assessing potential trade secret cases and how those considerations should shape in-house strategy from day one.

• How DOJ evaluates trade secret theft referrals, including evidence quality, victim cooperation, and jurisdictional factors.
• When arbitration or civil litigation may be more effective than criminal referral.
• Cost, disclosure, and control trade-offs across arbitration, court proceedings, and DOJ involvement.
• How early choices affect leverage, timing, and the ability to pursue parallel proceedings.

Recent decisions show courts putting reverse engineering defences under the spotlight –
increasingly scrutinising how information is obtained, how AI tools are used, and whether access or contractual restrictions were breached. This session brings together a panel of in-house counsel, litigators, and technical experts to explore when reverse engineering defences are useful in practice, and what this means for enforcement and defence strategies.

• When reverse engineering is treated as lawful versus when courts view it as a cover for misappropriation.
• How courts assess claims of independent development and “clean room” processes in practice.
• The growing importance of contractual restrictions, product terms, and access controls.
• Lessons from recent disputes where reverse engineering arguments failed due to evidence of prior access or employee movement.
• Practical steps companies are taking to protect against reverse engineering without over-claiming secrecy.

Regulatory and government disclosure obligations increasingly require companies to submit highly sensitive technical and commercial information that would otherwise qualify as trade secrets. Join this session to find out how in-house teams manage regulatory compliance without undermining future trade secret protection or litigation position.

• Understand where US regulatory disclosures most commonly weaken trade secret claims, including FDA filings, cybersecurity reporting, and other mandatory submissions.
• Learn how FOIA and government access risks are assessed in practice, and what courts look for when companies argue information remained confidential after disclosure.
• Identify procurement and government contracting disclosures that can compromise trade secret protection, and how to mitigate those risks upfront.
• Take away practical strategies for structuring regulatory submissions to preserve trade secret status and support reasonable-measures arguments in future disputes.

2026 marks the tenth anniversary of the enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), a landmark act that has brought previously unseen legal recognition and protection of trade secrets within the US. This keynote session will reflect on the progress made over the past ten years, key court decisions that continue to change the direction of trade secret legal protection, and predictions on how trade secret legal protection may continue to evolve.