Epic Outdoor Media Sales has taken a former employee to court to interdict him from sharing the company’s confidential information with his new employer.
Terrance Peterson was employed by Epic Outdoor, where he undertook that he would not divulge any of the company’s confidential information imparted to him during his employment to anyone else.
According to the company, Peterson’s contract made it clear that this obligation was extended beyond the termination of his employment with Epic Outdoor.
Peterson has taken up a new job at Network X, a competitor of Epic Outdoor.
Johannesburg High Court Judge Stuart Wilson ruled in favour of Epic Outdoor and Peterson was restrained from divulging the applicant’s confidential information to Network X or any other third party.
“The second respondent (Network X) is interdicted and restrained from seeking, possessing, using or disseminating any of the applicant’s (Epic Outdoor) confidential information that may be conveyed to it by the first respondent (Peterson).
“If the first respondent offers to disclose, or in fact discloses, any of the applicant’s confidential information to the second respondent, the second respondent will forthwith inform the applicant, setting out the date and time of the disclosure or the offer to disclose; the nature of the information offered or disclosed; and the steps the second respondent took thereafter in dealing with that information or the offer to disclose it,” reads court papers.
Wilson also ordered Peterson and Network X to pay the costs of the application.
Epic Outdoor stated that, contrary to these undertakings in his contract of engagement, Peterson has now accepted employment with Network X, which is one of its competitors, and has divulged, or is shortly to divulge, confidential information conveyed to him during his employment with them Network X.
“It is clear from the papers that Mr Peterson had access to a wide range of confidential information, and that his access to that information was the result of Epic Outdoor’s decision to build him up as a technological expert in the outdoor advertising industry.
“The strategy seems to have been to present Mr Peterson as a particularly skilled asset that only Epic Outdoor could offer to its clients.
The pitfall implicit in this approach is, of course, that an employee whose status is so elevated may one day leave and take his special skills and enhanced reputation to a competitor,” read the court judgment.
