Protecting your trade secrets means keeping them secret.

In Illinois Trade Secrets are defined as "a plan or process, tool, mechanism, compound, or informational data utilized by a person in his business operations and known only to him and such limited other persons to whom it may be necessary to confide it." ILC Industries, Inc. v Scott, 49 Ill 2d 88, 273 NE2d 393, 396 (1971).

The court in ILC stated that determining whether information is a trade secret involves:

1) the extent to which the information is known outside of [the] business;
2) the extent to which it is known by employees and others involved in [the] business;
3) the extent of measures taken by [the business] to guard the secrecy of the information;
4) the value of the information to [the business] and to his competitors;
5) the amount of effort or money expended by [the business] in developing the information; and
(6) the ease or difficulty with which the information could be properly acquired or duplicated by others.

Mr. Cooke has worked with employers to develop internal policies and procedures to protect trade secrets and represented employers in disputes involving employee attempts to take trade secrets for their own use.

To contact Mr. Cooke you can call him at (312) 497-9002 or email him at "gc@Cookeslaw.com".