Tammy Herne
Instructor: Wallace Bateman
MGT 531-Legal & Ethical Issues
Spring 2, 2014 MBA 14 SP
Martha McCaskey
The issue in the Martha McCaskey case is a question of proprietary information. More
specifically, McCaskey is faced with the question of what constitutes proprietary
information and what is safe to give to the client without breaching any trade secrets.
According to DeGeorge, proprietary information, or trade secrets, is a right of each
corporation that they can legally and morally protect and refuse to divulge to the public.
The types of information that Seleris client is asking for about their target companies are
held tightly by the target to ensure their market share. If the information is given to
competitors, they will lose their advantage. However, if specific information as to the new
chip is not released but instead is based on industry standards and already publicly held
information, the trade secrets would still be upheld, as there is no way to know for sure
that the target is using exactly what has been found.
Another issue that McCaskey faces is the methods used to obtain the information to be
given to the client. As mentioned above, if it comes directly from the target, it would be
releasing trade secrets and infringing on the targets right to hold those. In this case,
McCaskey has been asked to not contact the target in order to keep them from knowing
that the client is looking into the new chip. In order to get the specific information that
they are after, McCaskey will have to use alternative means such as contacting other
competitors in the industry, vendors of the target, and possibly ex-employees of the target.
Hackert and Malone are pushing for McCaskey to use Phil Devon after learning that he
worked for the target in the past. Devon seems open to supplying McCaskey with any
information that she needs, but she may be breaching the targets right to trade secrets by
doing so. However, there is a chance that he has no direct knowledge of the new chip and
would only be giving her information that he has obtained in helping other clients out.
Even that could be breaching areas of confidentiality though, as she would not know if the
other companies held that information closely, so the possibility of breaching other trade
secrets is unknown.
One of the issues in this case is that management is encouraging what could be seen as
