## Facts

- Ed Nowogroski Insurance, Inc. operated a Washington insurance agency whose value depended heavily on customer relationships and customer-specific information developed through acquisitions and ongoing service.
- The agency maintained confidential client files containing customer-specific data, including policy expiration dates and coverage needs.
- The trial court found the client information was confidential, not readily available to the public, and provided a competitive advantage.
- The agency trained employees on confidentiality and treated customer information as confidential, but did not require written confidentiality agreements.
- Three employees (Rucker, Rieck, and Kiser) left the agency and joined a competing insurance agency.
- After joining the competitor, they solicited the former employer’s clients using customer information obtained during their prior employment.
- Some customer information was taken in tangible form, and some was retained and used from memory; the trial court expressly found solicitation using memorized client information derived from the confidential files.

## Issues

1. Whether information qualifying as a trade secret under Washington’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) loses protection when a former employee retains and uses it from memory rather than from a tangible source.
2. Whether damages for misappropriation may be based on solicitation using memorized trade-secret information.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals.
- The court held there is no distinction under the UTSA between written and memorized trade-secret information.
- The court rejected any “memory” exception to trade-secret protection.
- The trial court erred by denying damages solely because the misappropriation occurred through memorized information; damages were to be recalculated to include such misuse.

## Legal Principles

- Under the UTSA, trade-secret status depends on the information’s economic value from not being generally known and the owner’s reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy, not the medium in which the information is kept or recalled.
- Misappropriation can occur through unauthorized use of trade-secret information retained in memory, including use to solicit the former employer’s customers.
- Courts distinguish permissible use of an employee’s general skills and knowledge from impermissible use of specific confidential information that meets the statutory definition of a trade secret.
- A rule exempting memorized trade secrets is inconsistent with the UTSA’s text and purposes because it would encourage memorization as an evasion strategy and would impair uniformity of trade-secret law.

## Conclusion

Washington law protects qualifying trade secrets regardless of whether they are taken in tangible form or retained in memory; a former employee’s use of memorized trade-secret client information to compete and solicit customers may constitute misappropriation and support an award of damages.


Ed Nowogroski Ins., Inc. v. Rucker, 137 Wash. 2d 427, 971 P.2d 936 (Wash. 1999)