Often when a highly skilled and experienced employee leaves one compan

Often when a highly skilled and experienced
employee leaves one company to work for another,
there is the potential for a transfer of sensitive
information between competitors. Two basic principles
(5) in such cases appear irreconcilable: the right of the
company to its intellectual property—its proprietary
data and trade secrets—and the right of individuals to
seek gainful employment and to make free use of their
abilities. Nevertheless, the courts have often tried to
(10) preserve both parties’ legal rights by refusing to
prohibit the employee from working for the competitor,
but at the same time providing an injunction against
disclosure of any of the former employer’s secrets. It
has been argued that because such measures help
(15) generate suspicions and similar psychological barriers
to full and free utilization of abilities in the employee’s
new situation, they are hardly effective in upholding
the individual’s rights to free employment decisions.
But it is also doubtful that they are effective in
(20) preserving trade secrets.

It is obviously impossible to divest oneself of that
part of one’s expertise that one has acquired from
former employers and coworkers. Nor, in general, can
one selectively refrain from its use, given that it has
(25) become an integral part of one’s total intellectual
capacity. Nevertheless, almost any such information
that is not public knowledge may legitimately be
claimed as corporate property: normal employment
agreements provide for corporate ownership of all
(30) relevant data, including inventions, generated by the
employee in connection with the company’s business.

Once an employee takes a position with a
competitor, the trade secrets that have been acquired by
that employee may manifest themselves clearly and
(35) consciously. This is what court injunctions seek to
prohibit. But they are far more likely to manifest
themselves subconsciously and inconspicuously—for
example, in one’s daily decisions at the new post, or in
the many small contributions one might make to a large
(40) team effort—often in the form of an intuitive sense of
what to do or to avoid. Theoretically, an injunction also
prohibits such inadvertent “leakage.” However, the
former employer faces the practical problem of
securing evidence of such leakage, for little will
(45) usually be apparent from the public activities of the
new employer. And even if the new employee’s
activities appear suspicious, there is the further
problem of distinguishing trade secrets from what may
be legitimately asserted as technological skills
(50) developed independently by the employee or already
possessed by the new employer. This is a major
stumbling block in the attempt to protect trade secrets,
since the proprietor has no recourse against others who
independently generate the same information. It is
(55) therefore unlikely that an injunction against disclosure
of trade secrets to future employers actually prevents
any transfer of information except for the passage of
documents and other concrete embodiments of the
secrets.

1. Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?

(A) There are more effective ways than court injunctions to preserve both a company’s right to protect its intellectual property and individuals’ rights to make free use of their abilities.
(B) Court injunctions must be strengthened if they are to remain a relevant means of protecting corporations’ trade secrets.
(C) Enforcement of court injunctions designed to protect proprietary information is impossible when employees reveal such information to new employers.
(D) Court injunctions prohibiting employees from disclosing former employers’ trade secrets to new employers probably do not achieve all of their intended objectives.
(E) The rights of employees to make full use of their talents and previous training are being seriously eroded by the prohibitions placed on them by court injunctions designed to prevent the transfer of trade secrets.


2. Given the passage’s content and tone, which one of the following statements would most likely be found elsewhere in a work from which this passage is an excerpt?

(A) Given the law as it stands, corporations concerned about preserving trade secrets might be best served by giving their employees strong incentives to stay in their current jobs.
(B) While difficult to enforce and interpret, injunctions are probably the most effective means of halting the inadvertent transfer of trade secrets while simultaneously protecting the rights of employees.
(C) Means of redress must be made available to companies that suspect, but cannot prove, that former employees are revealing protected information to competitors.
(D) Even concrete materials such as computer disks are so easy to copy and conceal that it will be a waste of time for courts to try to prevent the spread of information through physical theft.
(E) The psychological barriers that an injunction can place on an employee in a new workplace are inevitably so subtle that they have no effect on the employee.


3. The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to

(A) suggest that injunctions against the disclosure of trade secrets not only create problems for employees in the workplace, but also are unable to halt the illicit spread of proprietary information
(B) suggest that the information contained in “documents and other concrete embodiments” is usually so trivial that injunctions do little good in protecting intellectual property
(C) argue that new methods must be found to address the delicate balance between corporate and individual rights
(D) support the position that the concept of protecting trade secrets is no longer viable in an age of increasing access to information
(E) argue that injunctions are not necessary for the protection of trade secrets


4. The passage provides the most support for which one of the following assertions?

(A) Injunctions should be imposed by the courts only when there is strong reason to believe that an employee will reveal proprietary information.
(B) There is apparently no reliable way to protect both the rights of companies to protect trade secrets and the rights of employees to seek new employment.
(C) Employees should not be allowed to take jobs with their former employers’ competitors when their new job could compromise trade secrets of their former employers.
(D) The multiplicity of means for transferring information in the workplace only increases the need for injunctions.
(E) Some companies seek injunctions as a means of punishing employees who take jobs with their competitors.


5. With which one of the following statements regarding documents and other concrete embodiments mentioned in line 58 would the author be most likely to agree?

(A) While the transfer of such materials would be damaging, even the seemingly innocuous contributions of an employee to a competitor can do more harm in the long run.
(B) Such materials are usually less informative than what the employee may recollect about a previous job.
(C) Injunctions against the disclosure of trade secrets should carefully specify which materials are included in order to focus on the most damaging ones.
(D) Large-scale transfer of documents and other materials cannot be controlled by injunctions.
(E) Such concrete materials lend themselves to control and identification more readily than do subtler means of transferring information.


6. In the passage, the author makes which one of the following claims?

(A) Injunctions against the disclosure of trade secrets limit an employee’s chances of being hired by a competitor.
(B) Measures against the disclosure of trade secrets are unnecessary except in the case of documents and other concrete embodiments of the secrets.
(C) Employees who switch jobs to work for a competitor usually unintentionally violate the law by doing so.
(D) Employers are not restricted in the tactics they can use when seeking to secure protected information from new employees.
(E) What may seem like intellectual theft may in fact be an example of independent innovation.