Vedder Price

Firm overview:

For more than 35 years, lawyers from Vedder Price’s Restrictive Covenants & Trade Secrets practice have counselled and litigated for clients on restrictive covenants and trade secrets in employment and sale-of-business matters.

Vedder Price has more than 400 lawyers and professionals, serving clients of all sizes and  industries from offices in Chicago, New York, Washington, DC, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore, Dallas and Miami.

Vedder Price is used to responding quickly in litigation or potential litigation, and in working with clients on restrictive covenants and other means to protect intellectual capital and trade secrets.

The firm has earned the respect of nationally renowned lawyers on the other side when achieving favourable results for clients from Fortune 50 companies to individual entrepreneurs.

Vedder Price has successfully prosecuted and defended hundreds of claims involving restrictive covenants and trade secrets at the state and federal trial and appellate court levels.

Team overview:

Chicago lawyer Anthony Ashley is identified by a highly ranked peer who has had cases against him: “He's an excellent attorney. Does a nice job, very competent.” Ashley, a shareholder in the litigation practice and the chair of the Corporate Liability Group, has been serving clients for more than 30 years with a global, complex commercial litigation and employment law practice.

Ashley counsels and litigates across US federal and state courts, international courts and tribunals, and arbitration forums. For 15 years, he has also served as outside general counsel to multiple organisations ranging in size and industry.

A founding member of the litigation practice subgroup Restrictive Covenants and Trade Secrets, Ashley has tried domestic and international cases involving post-employment or sale of business restrictive covenants, trade secrets, unfair competition, and intellectual property rights infringement.

He also has extensive experience prosecuting and defending motions for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, and other emergency proceedings.

Key matters:

• Stericycle v Allied Holdings Group, No. 1:23-cv-1322

Chicago-based Vedder Price shareholder, James Garvey represented waste management company, Stericyle, in obtaining a restraining order against a competitor, Allied Holdings Group, based on unfair competition.

Stericycle alleged that, in an attempt to to take its business, Allied personnel claimed to be Stericycle customers, and told Stericycle’s customers they were from Stericycle.

Stericycle also suggested that Allied used confidential information and/or trade secrets of Stericycle in targeting Stericycle customers for these purposes. This type of “passing off”—that is, falsely indicating an association with another—is prohibited by various federal and state laws relating to unfair or deceptive business practices.

Tyler Cesar of California law firm Pierce Kavcioglu Espinosa & Cesar represented Allied Holdings Group.

• Vedder Price shareholder Daniel Green successfully represented a private equity firm, one of its portfolio companies and four of its executives in an action brought by a national nutritional bar brand in the New York County Commercial Division.

The complaint included claims for breach of contract, tortious interference and misappropriation of trade secrets, and was dismissed on a pre-answer motion. The dismissal was affirmed in entirety by the Appellate Division.

Clients:

APC, Kraft, Stericycle