Blank Rome’s Anthony Haller Named 2020 Pennsylvania Trailblazer by The Legal Intelligencer
Blank Rome Partner Anthony B. Haller, who leads the Firm’s Trade Secret Protection, Employee Defection, and Unfair Competition practice, has been recognized as one of The Legal Intelligencer’s 2020 Pennsylvania Trailblazers. The Trailblazers series is developed by the business arm of The Legal Intelligencer and spotlights attorneys who are “agents of change” and have made significant marks on the practice, policy, and technological advancement of their respective sectors. Earlier this year, Anthony was also recognized as one of the 2020 Employment Law Trailblazers by The National Law Journal.
Anthony’s full Pennsylvania Trailblazer honoree profile can be found here and is shared in full below.
Anthony B. Haller
Blank Rome LLP
PIONEER SPIRIT
A client once made a point about non-compete clauses and other employment agreements that stuck with Anthony Haller: “There’s no point in having them if you don’t enforce them.” More than 20 years later, Haller has developed a specialty in crafting enforceable employment agreements that protect employers’ trade secrets and discourage unfair competition due to insider knowledge. Haller has litigated non-compete agreements in 39 states, with resolutions mostly favorable to his clients.
TRAILS BLAZED
“If you think about the protection of intellectual property, it’s a critical fourth level of protection. You have patent, you have copyright, you have trademark.” But Haller considers trade secret protection the primary means to secure intellectual property. “It’s not something that you can register. But it is something that companies need to protect their competitive position.” Some states have taken more pro-employee stands in recent years; Massachusetts, for instance, legislated limits on the scope and application of non-compete agreements. So “the second big challenge is to deal with these new limitations and to find new ways of protecting confidential information and the customer relationships and goodwill and investment in research and development.”
FUTURE EXPLORATIONS
Gone are the days when a departing employee would have to smuggle out bulky files to make off with important trade secrets. As technology advances, Haller sees cases of employees dumping a company’s most valuable intellectual property onto a hard drive that on one ever notices. Haller’s firm has begun linking its cybersecurity practice with its employment practice to address that reality. “A company can lose its trade secrets and the things that make it most competitive if it doesn’t protect those and it doesn’t seek to enforce the protection of them.”