A Montgomery County distributor loses its top salesperson on a Friday. By the following month, three of the company’s largest accounts have moved to a competitor the salesperson just joined, and the competitor is quoting prices that look suspiciously familiar. The owner checks the company’s systems and finds nothing: no bulk downloads, no forwarded emails, no files copied to a thumb drive. The salesperson simply walked out with what was in their head.

Most business owners in that position conclude they have no case. If nothing was taken, nothing was stolen.

Maryland law says otherwise. In a reported 2023 decision, the Appellate Court of Maryland affirmed that Cantwell-Cleary’s confidential customer and pricing information constituted trade secrets under the Maryland Uniform Trade Secrets Act and explained that information does not lose protection merely because it was memorized. Physical copying is not required to establish misappropriation, although the record in Ingram also included direct evidence that some information was copied.

That holding cuts both ways, and this guide covers both. For an owner, it means a viable claim may exist where you assumed none did. For a departing employee or a partner starting a competing venture, it means the common assumption that you are safe if you did not copy anything is wrong.

What follows covers what qualifies as a trade secret in Maryland, the reasonable efforts requirement where most claims actually fail, what misappropriation means, the Ingram decision in detail including its first-impression damages holding, how trade secret claims interact with non-compete and confidentiality agreements, the remedies available, the federal statute that runs alongside the Maryland one, and the concrete steps a business should take before anyone resigns. It pairs closely with our guide on non-compete enforceability in Maryland, since the two claims are usually brought together.

Maryland adopted the Maryland Uniform Trade Secrets Act, codified at Md. Code, Com. Law Sections 11-1201 through 11-1209 and commonly called MUTSA.

Section 11-1201(e) defines a trade secret as information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that satisfies two requirements:

1. It derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use; and
2. It is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.

Notice what is not in that definition. There is no requirement that the information be technical, novel, patentable, or written down. The word compilation is doing significant work: a collection of individually unremarkable facts can be a trade secret if assembling it took effort and the assembled version has value precisely because competitors do not have it.

Information that can qualify in a typical Maryland business includes:

• Customer and client lists, particularly with purchase history, contacts, and preferences attached
• Pricing information, discount structures, and margin data
• Vendor and supplier terms and cost information
• Internal financial models, forecasts, and profitability analyses by customer or product
• Bid and proposal strategies, including how the company prices competitive work
• Customer acquisition methods, pipeline data, and lead sources
• Proprietary processes, formulas, recipes, and software
• Manufacturing know-how and quality specifications

Maryland courts also draw on a familiar set of considerations when evaluating whether information qualifies, including how widely the information is known outside the business and how widely it is known by employees and others inside it. That framing is useful diagnostically: the more people who know something without restriction, the harder it is to call it a secret.

The second statutory element is the one that decides cases, and it is entirely within a business owner’s control before a dispute ever arises.

Section 11-1201(e)(2) requires that the information be the subject of efforts reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy. Neither the statute nor any regulation defines what that means. Maryland case law supplies examples rather than a checklist: marking documents as confidential and keeping them secured, limiting the number of people who receive the information, obtaining agreements from recipients that they will not copy or transfer it, and taking steps to ensure that employees will not disclose it.

The practical standard is that a court will look at what you actually did before the dispute, not at how valuable the information obviously was. Courts scrutinize whether the business took objectively reasonable steps to protect the alleged secret before it asked for relief. This is why the most common failure in Maryland trade secret litigation is not a weak defendant. It is a plaintiff whose information was genuinely valuable and genuinely confidential in practice, but who never did anything concrete to protect it and cannot point to a single measure when asked.

Reasonable does not mean airtight. A small Maryland company is not expected to deploy enterprise data-loss-prevention software. But it is expected to have done something deliberate: written confidentiality obligations, access limits, and some marking or segregation of the sensitive material. The concrete checklist appears in the protection section below.

MUTSA identifies two ways misappropriation occurs. Section 11-1201(c) covers:

• Acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; and
• Disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent, in defined circumstances including where the person used improper means to acquire it, or knew or had reason to know that their knowledge of it was derived from a person who had a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use.

Improper means covers conduct such as theft, bribery, misrepresentation, and breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, including a duty arising from a confidentiality agreement or a confidential relationship. Note the second path carefully: an employee who acquired information entirely legitimately during employment can still misappropriate it by using it later without consent, where a duty of confidentiality attached.

To establish a MUTSA claim, a plaintiff must prove that the information qualifies as a trade secret and that the defendant misappropriated it within the meaning of Section 11-1201(c). Misappropriation can occur through acquisition of a trade secret by someone who knows or has reason to know that it was acquired by improper means. It can also occur through unauthorized disclosure or use in the circumstances specified by the statute, including where the person’s knowledge was acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain secrecy or limit use. Accordingly, proof that the defendant personally acquired the information by improper means is not required in every disclosure-or-use case. See generally DeSimone v. VSL Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 133 F. Supp. 3d 776 (D. Md. 2015).

One evidentiary point matters enormously in practice because direct evidence of theft and use is often unavailable. In Ingram, the Court recognized that misappropriation may be proved through circumstantial evidence. The evidence included the appellants’ longstanding access to Cantwell-Cleary’s secure customer and pricing information, their access to information removed by coworkers, their success selling the same products to former customers at nearly identical prices, and direct evidence that Ingram copied some customer and pricing information. A confession or a complete download log is therefore not always necessary, but the circumstantial evidence must support a reasonable inference that the protected information was actually acquired, disclosed, or used.

Ingram v. Cantwell-Cleary Co., 260 Md. App. 122, 306 A.3d 1205 (2023), decided December 22, 2023 in an opinion by Judge Leahy, is the most significant recent Maryland appellate decision on trade secrets, and its facts will look familiar to many business owners.

Cantwell-Cleary was a family-run company selling packaging materials, cleaning and office supplies, and paper products. Several employees left, became involved with a competing packaging company, and brought many of their former clients with them, selling those clients the same shipping and packaging products they had previously bought from Cantwell-Cleary. Cantwell-Cleary experienced a sharp decline in revenue and filed suit in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, asserting breach of the company’s confidentiality and non-compete agreement, misappropriation of trade secrets under MUTSA, breach of the duty of loyalty, and civil conspiracy.

The trial court found for Cantwell-Cleary, awarding several hundred thousand dollars per defendant, well over a million dollars in total. On appeal, four issues were presented, and the Appellate Court split its rulings:

The Court vacated the judgment as to damages and the order clarifying attorney’s fees, and remanded on a limited basis to recalculate lost profits and to specify the grounds for any malice finding.

The single most quoted aspect of Ingram is its treatment of memorized information. The Court explained that information does not lose its status as a trade secret merely because it was committed to memory and that the unauthorized use of a memorized trade secret can constitute misappropriation. Ingram was not, however, a memorization-only case: the record included direct evidence that Ingram copied some trade-secret information, together with circumstantial evidence that the appellants had access to and used Cantwell-Cleary’s confidential customer and pricing information.

That disposes of the most common defense in a departing-employee case: I did not take anything.

But it has to be read alongside an equally established Maryland principle running the other direction. Maryland courts have recognized that former employees cannot uniformly be liable simply for retaining information that is either common knowledge or merely learned during employment, and that a former employee is not expected to un-remember what they learned before resigning. As the Court of Appeals acknowledged in Operations Research, Inc. v. Davidson, departing employees both contribute to and benefit from their experience with a former employer.

Section 11-1203 permits recovery for the actual loss caused by the misappropriation and any unjust enrichment caused by the misappropriation that is not taken into account in computing actual loss. In lieu of damages measured by other methods, the court may impose liability for a reasonable royalty for the unauthorized disclosure or use of the trade secret.

Ingram addressed the calculation of lost-profit damages as a matter of first impression among Maryland appellate courts. The Court explained that, when the relevant data is available, evaluating the defendant’s actual sales to customers diverted through the misappropriation generally provides a more concrete measure than projections based solely on the plaintiff’s historical sales. Historical sales are not categorically prohibited, but the plaintiff must provide a rationale for using them instead of available actual sales data. The Court also held that losses involving customers who did not follow the defendants could not be included without proof that those losses were caused by the misappropriation. Finally, the permissible damages period must correspond to the period during which the information would have remained unavailable through proper means and continued to provide an economic advantage; the trial court therefore needed to explain its use of a three-year period.

That is a meaningful constraint. A business whose revenue fell after a key departure cannot simply present the decline and attribute it to the misappropriation. Revenue falls for many reasons: market conditions, the loss of a relationship the employee legitimately owned, ordinary customer churn, competitive pricing that owes nothing to stolen data. The plaintiff has to connect specific diverted business to the misappropriation.

Practical implications for a plaintiff building a case:

• Identify the specific customers and transactions you contend were diverted, rather than presenting an aggregate decline
• Obtain the defendant’s actual sales records to those customers in discovery, because that is the measure the Court endorsed
• Be prepared to account for customers who would have left anyway and revenue lost for unrelated reasons
• Retain an expert who builds the model around diverted sales rather than a historical-trend projection
• Preserve your own pre-departure records, since the customer-level baseline is the comparison set

This holding deserves its own section because of how much money it can represent.

The Ingram defendants had signed the company’s standard confidentiality and non-compete agreement, which fixed damages at $50,000 for a breach. They argued that this liquidated damages clause set the ceiling on Cantwell-Cleary’s recovery. Had that argument prevailed, a seven-figure judgment would have collapsed into a fraction of itself.

The Appellate Court rejected it. Because MUTSA explicitly directs that a breach of contract claim, whether or not the claim is based upon misappropriation of a trade secret, may be brought alongside a statutory claim for misappropriation, the existence of an agreement imposing liquidated damages for breach of a confidentiality clause, or for other conduct similar to misappropriation, does not necessarily foreclose monetary relief under MUTSA. The Court cited Md. Code, Com. Law Section 11-1207(b)(1)(i).

Section 11-1207 is worth understanding generally. It provides that MUTSA displaces conflicting tort, restitutionary, and other law of Maryland providing civil remedies for misappropriation of a trade secret, but expressly does not affect contractual remedies, whether or not based upon misappropriation of a trade secret. So common law claims that merely duplicate a trade secret claim may be displaced, while contract claims survive independently.

Related claims commonly travel with a MUTSA count, including breach of contract, breach of the duty of loyalty, tortious interference, and civil conspiracy. Where the departing person was an owner rather than an employee, fiduciary duty claims come into play as well, which we cover in our guide on breach of fiduciary duty by a business partner in Maryland.

• Injunctive relief. Section 11-1202 provides that actual or threatened misappropriation may be enjoined. This is usually the most urgent relief, because it stops the ongoing use rather than compensating for it afterward. Maryland courts can issue temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions in trade secret cases, but the standards are demanding: the movant must show likelihood of success and that monetary damages alone would not adequately compensate the harm. Section 11-1202 also authorizes a court, in appropriate circumstances, to compel affirmative acts necessary to protect the trade secret.
• Actual loss and unjust enrichment. Under Section 11-1203, both are available, with unjust enrichment recoverable to the extent it is not already captured in the actual loss figure.
• Reasonable royalty. In lieu of damages measured by other methods, Section 11-1203(c) permits damages to be measured by a reasonable royalty for the unauthorized disclosure or use of the trade secret. Section 11-1202(c) also permits an injunction, in exceptional circumstances, to condition future use on payment of a reasonable royalty for no longer than the period during which use otherwise could have been prohibited.
• Exemplary damages. If willful and malicious misappropriation exists, Section 11-1203(d) permits the court to award exemplary damages in an amount not exceeding twice the damages award referenced in Section 11-1203(a). The award is discretionary, and Ingram requires the trial court to explain the grounds for any finding of willful and malicious misappropriation.
• Attorney’s fees. Section 11-1204 permits reasonable attorney’s fees in defined circumstances, including willful and malicious misappropriation. Importantly, it cuts both ways: fees may also be awarded where a claim of misappropriation is made in bad faith, or where a motion to terminate an injunction is made or resisted in bad faith. That provision is a real deterrent against filing a trade secret claim as a competitive weapon.
• Protection of the secret during litigation. Section 11-1205 directs that a court shall preserve the secrecy of an alleged trade secret by reasonable means, which can include protective orders, in camera hearings, sealing records, and ordering participants not to disclose the trade secret without court approval. This addresses the concern every plaintiff raises: whether suing means publishing the very thing being protected.

The deadline. Section 11-1206 sets a three-year limitations period. An action for misappropriation must be brought within three years after the misappropriation is discovered or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been discovered, and a continuing misappropriation constitutes a single claim. That last clause matters: the clock does not restart with each new use.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, effective May 11, 2016 and codified in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, created a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. It is available where the trade secret is related to a product or service used in, or intended for use in, interstate or foreign commerce, which most Maryland businesses of any scale can satisfy.

The DTSA supplements rather than replaces MUTSA. A Maryland business may plead both, and the choice of forum, the availability of federal discovery tools, and the desire for a federal injunction often drive the decision.

Federal remedies broadly parallel the Maryland ones: injunctive relief, actual damages, unjust enrichment, a reasonable royalty in appropriate circumstances, exemplary damages of up to twice the amount of damages awarded under 18 U.S.C. Section 1836(b)(3)(B) for willful and malicious misappropriation, and attorney’s fees. The federal statute also carries a three-year limitations period.

One federal remedy has no Maryland analogue. In extraordinary circumstances, the DTSA permits an ex parte civil seizure order, allowing a court to order seizure of property necessary to prevent the propagation or dissemination of the trade secret, without first hearing from the other side. Courts grant these rarely and the requirements are stringent, but in a genuine emergency involving imminent dissemination, it is a tool Maryland law does not offer.

Everything in this section serves a dual purpose: it reduces the chance of loss, and it builds the reasonable efforts record that Section 11-1201(e)(2) requires. Both objectives are served by the same work.

Documents

• Written confidentiality agreements with every employee, contractor, and consultant who touches sensitive information, defining confidential information specifically rather than generically.
• The DTSA whistleblower notice in each of those agreements, per the section above.
• Non-solicitation provisions covering customers and employees, which are often more defensible than a broad non-compete. Our post on non-compete enforceability in Maryland covers the reasonableness framework and the statutory wage thresholds.
• A written confidentiality policy in the handbook, acknowledged in writing.
• Vendor and partner NDAs, since third-party disclosure without protection undermines secrecy.

Practices

• Limit access to sensitive data to those who need it, and document who has it.
• Mark and segregate confidential material rather than leaving it commingled with routine files.
• Control export. Restrict bulk downloads, personal cloud storage, external drives, and forwarding to personal email where practical.
• Log access to critical databases, because the log is both a deterrent and the evidence you will need later.
• Train and remind. Periodic reinforcement of confidentiality obligations is itself evidence of reasonable efforts.

The exit process

• Conduct a structured exit interview that reminds the departing person of their obligations in writing and asks where they are going.
• Obtain a written certification that all company property and information has been returned and nothing retained.
• Cut access immediately across email, cloud storage, CRM, and any shared drives.
• Preserve the device and account in their existing state rather than immediately reimaging the laptop, which is the single most common way Maryland companies destroy their own evidence.
• Review access logs for the weeks preceding the resignation, when unusual download activity typically occurs.

For owners rather than employees, the same protections belong in the operating agreement or shareholders’ agreement. See our guides on the Maryland LLC operating agreement and on business partner disputes in Maryland.

1. Preserve electronic evidence immediately, before anything else. Forensic trails from USB connections, email forwarding, cloud sync, printing, and file access are recoverable, but only if routine IT processes have not overwritten them. Suspend automated deletion and backup rotation, and do not reimage or reissue the departing person’s laptop.
2. Do not investigate internally in a way that damages the record. Well-meaning IT staff browsing a departed employee’s machine can alter metadata and complicate later forensic analysis. Isolate the device and involve a professional.
3. Define precisely what you believe was taken. Vague claims fail. Identify the specific compilations, files, or datasets at issue.
4. Confirm what protections applied to that information. Which agreements were signed, what access controls existed, whether it was marked. This is the reasonable efforts showing.
5. Identify the diverted business specifically. Determine which customers and transactions actually moved to the competitor and what sales and profits resulted. Ingram treats that evidence as particularly important when proving lost profits, while recognizing that MUTSA also permits unjust-enrichment and reasonable-royalty measures where appropriate.
6. Assess urgency. If dissemination is ongoing or imminent, injunctive relief may be warranted, and the timeline is days rather than weeks.
7. Consider the bad faith risk before filing. Section 11-1204 allows fees against a plaintiff who brings a misappropriation claim in bad faith. A trade secret claim used as leverage against ordinary competition is not costless.
8. Watch the clock. Three years from discovery or from when reasonable diligence should have produced discovery, with continuing misappropriation treated as a single claim.

Complex business disputes in Maryland may be assigned to the Business and Technology Case Management Program under Maryland Rule 16-308, which is generally favorable for a case of this kind.

• Assuming nothing was taken because nothing was copied. Ingram holds that memorized customer and pricing information can support liability.
• Relying on the information being obviously confidential. Section 11-1201(e)(2) requires actual reasonable efforts, and this is where claims fail.
• Reimaging the laptop. The most common self-inflicted evidentiary wound in these cases.
• Assuming a liquidated damages clause caps recovery. Ingram says otherwise; the MUTSA claim runs alongside the contract claim.
• Presenting a revenue decline as the entire damages case. Ingram favored actual diverted-sales evidence when available, required a demonstrated causal connection between the misappropriation and the claimed loss, and required justification for both historical projections and the selected damages period.
• Omitting the DTSA whistleblower notice. It can forfeit federal exemplary damages and attorney’s fees.
• Treating every departure as theft. General skill and experience travel with the employee, and Section 11-1204 permits fees against a bad faith claimant.
• Waiting to see whether customers come back. The three-year clock runs from discovery, and delay undermines any request for injunctive relief.
• Having no written confidentiality agreements at all. The single cheapest fix available, and the one most often skipped.

Under the Maryland Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Md. Code, Com. Law Section 11-1201(e), a trade secret is information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, and that is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy. That definition is broader than most business owners expect. It is not limited to formulas and source code. Customer lists, pricing information, vendor terms, profit margins, internal financial models, supplier relationships, and customer acquisition methods can all qualify. The two requirements that do the work are independent economic value from secrecy and reasonable efforts to keep the information secret.

They can be, and a Maryland appellate court has now said so in a reported opinion. In Ingram v. Cantwell-Cleary Co., 260 Md. App. 122 (2023), the Appellate Court of Maryland held that the plaintiff’s confidential customer lists and pricing information constituted trade secrets under MUTSA. Information in a company’s internal database, including customer lists, vendor pricing, profit margins, and other pricing information, can qualify where the statutory requirements are met. The critical caveat is that qualification is not automatic. A list of names anyone could assemble from public sources, or a list the company took no steps to protect, is unlikely to qualify. What separates a protectable customer list from an unprotectable one is usually the compiled detail behind it and the effort the company made to keep it confidential.

Memorization is not, by itself, a defense in Maryland. Ingram v. Cantwell-Cleary explained that information does not lose its trade-secret status merely because it was committed to memory and that unauthorized use of a memorized trade secret can constitute misappropriation. Ingram was not a memorization-only case, however: the record also included direct evidence that Ingram copied some information and circumstantial evidence that the appellants had access to and used Cantwell-Cleary’s confidential customer and pricing information. This surprises many business owners and many departing employees, both of whom often assume that if nothing was downloaded, copied, emailed, or printed, nothing was taken. There is a genuine counterweight, however. Maryland courts have recognized that a former employee is not expected to un-remember general skill, knowledge, and experience acquired during employment. The line falls between general know-how, which an employee may use freely, and specific protected compilations such as a confidential customer and pricing database.

The statute requires efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances, and there is no checklist in the statute or the regulations defining what that means. Maryland case law offers examples: marking documents as confidential and keeping them secured, limiting disclosure to a defined group, obtaining agreements from those who receive the information that they will not copy or transfer it, and taking steps to ensure employees will not disclose it. In practice, courts scrutinize whether the business took objectively reasonable steps before it sought relief. This is the element on which otherwise strong claims most often fail, because the underlying information was genuinely valuable and genuinely secret in fact, but the company never did anything concrete to protect it. Reasonable does not mean perfect, and the standard scales to the size of the business, but it does require something more than an assumption that information would stay private.

Often yes, and this is one of the most valuable holdings in Ingram for Maryland business owners. The defendants there argued that the liquidated damages clauses in their non-compete agreements, which fixed damages at $50,000 for a breach, capped what the company could recover. The Appellate Court disagreed. Because MUTSA explicitly directs that a breach of contract claim, whether or not based upon misappropriation of a trade secret, may be brought alongside a statutory misappropriation claim, the existence of an agreement imposing liquidated damages for breach of a confidentiality clause does not necessarily foreclose monetary relief under MUTSA. See Md. Code, Com. Law Section 11-1207(b)(1)(i). The practical consequence is significant: a contractual damages cap that looks like the ceiling on your recovery may not be, because the statutory claim runs alongside the contract claim.

Section 11-1203 permits recovery for actual loss caused by the misappropriation and unjust enrichment not already accounted for in computing actual loss. In lieu of damages measured by other methods, liability may be imposed for a reasonable royalty for unauthorized disclosure or use. Ingram specifically addressed lost-profit damages. The Court explained that, when actual sales data is available, sales made by the defendant to customers diverted through the misappropriation generally provide a more concrete measure than projections based solely on the plaintiff’s historical sales. Historical data may still be used if there is a sound rationale. The plaintiff must also prove that each claimed loss was caused by the misappropriation and justify the period during which the information continued to provide an economic advantage.

Section 11-1202 provides that actual or threatened misappropriation may be enjoined, which is often the most urgent relief because it stops ongoing use. Section 11-1203 permits damages for actual loss plus unjust enrichment not accounted for in the actual loss calculation, and provides that where willful and malicious misappropriation exists, the court may award exemplary damages in an amount not exceeding twice any award of actual damages and unjust enrichment. Section 11-1204 permits an award of reasonable attorney’s fees in defined circumstances, including willful and malicious misappropriation and, notably, where a claim of misappropriation is made in bad faith, which cuts against overreaching plaintiffs. Section 11-1205 allows the court to take steps to preserve the secrecy of the trade secret during the litigation itself, through protective orders, sealing, and in camera proceedings.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 created a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation, available where the trade secret is related to a product or service used in, or intended for use in, interstate or foreign commerce. It supplements rather than replaces MUTSA, so a Maryland business may have both a state and a federal claim on the same facts. The DTSA offers remedies broadly parallel to MUTSA, including injunctive relief, actual damages, unjust enrichment, a reasonable royalty in appropriate cases, exemplary damages of up to twice the amount of damages awarded under 18 U.S.C. Section 1836(b)(3)(B) for willful and malicious misappropriation, and attorney’s fees. It also offers one remedy Maryland law does not: an ex parte civil seizure order in extraordinary circumstances, allowing seizure of property to prevent propagation or dissemination of the trade secret before the other side is heard.

This is the provision most often missed, and it can quietly cost a Maryland employer real money. Under 18 U.S.C. Section 1833(b)(3)(A), an employer must provide notice of the DTSA’s whistleblower immunity in any contract or agreement with an employee that governs the use of a trade secret or other confidential information. An employer complies either by including the notice or by cross-referencing a policy document that sets out the employer’s reporting policy for a suspected violation of law. The consequence of noncompliance is in Section 1833(b)(3)(C): an employer that does not provide the notice may not be awarded exemplary damages or attorney’s fees under the DTSA in an action against an employee to whom notice was not provided. The definition of employee for this purpose also reaches contractors and consultants. If your confidentiality agreements and restrictive covenants were drafted without this notice, you may have forfeited two of the most valuable federal remedies.

Move quickly and preserve evidence before anything else. Electronic forensic trails, including USB connection logs, email forwarding records, cloud sync activity, and file access histories, are recoverable but can be overwritten by routine IT processes such as reimaging a laptop or recycling backups. Suspend automated deletion, preserve the departing person’s devices and accounts in their current state, and do not have internal staff poke around in ways that could compromise the forensic record. Identify precisely what you believe was taken and confirm what protective measures were in place for it. Review the signed agreements. Then get counsel involved to assess whether injunctive relief is warranted, since Maryland’s limitations period for a MUTSA claim is three years from when the misappropriation was discovered or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been discovered.