Employee Confidentiality Agreement

sqooka

Hi all, I would like to get some opinions about something, and of course I'm aware any responses are not legal advice.
Say an employee confidentiality agreement contains the following clause:

"Except as required for the bona fide performance of my duties or as the company may otherwise consent in writing, I will not use, duplicate, publish, or disclose at any time, either during or after my employment, any information or material relating to the company or its associated companies' and operations’ businesses or other activities (including without limitation any third party information disclosed to the company) that are not generally available, known, or used by others, or the utility or value of which is not generally known or recognized as standard practice, whether or not the underlying details are in the public domain, including without limitation, documentation and reports, correspondence, drawings, plans, formulae, compilations, programs, devices, inventions, designs, methods, techniques, marketing and commercial strategies, processes, data, concepts and know-how, whether or not conceived, originated, discovered, or developed in whole or in part by me (such information and material hereinafter collectively called "company Information"). I understand and acknowledge that any company Information is the company's sole property and as such, is secret and confidential."

I want to know a few things. If someone copies work files to an external hard drive purely for the purpose of carrying out their work at home, not for an insidious purposes, are they protected from litigation? Can someone also clarify the following : If the employee has never received any clear instruction about what their duties are in the form of a written job description, does this make them more vulnerable (i.e. as they have no formal description of their duties how could they claim anything is done to allow them to perform their duties) or less vulnerable? Does this only apply to information which is not generally known or available, I couldn't tell if I'm misinterpreting it?

Strawberry Fields

Q1 "Except as required for the bona fide performance of my duties
First line from your post should cover situation 1 as long as taking stuff home is considered a requirement to perform your duties.
Ask HR for a job description. They surely have one. Have you been instructed in the job? Been given training?

sqooka

Thanks for your response. While bringing things home has allowed the employee to get a lot more work done I imagine it would not be considered necessary as they have a key to the building and so could work there till 12 o clock at night really. As for instruction or training....no. None whatsoever.

sqooka

I was also wondering if anyone could point me towards any cases involving this sort of thing. Is deleting everything and never using it enough to protect against a lawsuit?

monkeypants

This external hard disk, does it belong to the company and is it encrypted?

sqooka

No, it doesn't. But where work was e-mailed from home, and everybody knew this, it seems reasonably for the employee to assume that this made it okay as it meant that obviously work was being carried out at home with said files.