Employee Theft Claims under the CFAA: The Latest Chapter

With the proliferation of technology in the modern workplace, employee theft of confidential, proprietary, and trade-secret computer data is becoming commonplace. I have written extensively in prior blogs on the scope of remedies available under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030 et seq. (CFAA) and its state-law counterpart, the New Jersey Computer Related Offenses Act, N.J.S.A. § 2A:38A-3 et. seq. (NJCROA). A new decision from the Ninth Circuit has increased the odds that the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on whether the CFAA can be used to hold an employee criminally responsible for what had traditionally been regarded as a mere misappropriation of computer data in the workplace.