A lawyer’s favorite phrase might be “it depends.” And when an employer asks whether its customer lists qualify as a trade secret, “it depends” is often the answer. But even if it’s difficult to definitively state whether customer lists qualify as a trade secret, the converse—whether customer lists might not constitute a trade secret—can be helpful to assessing how much protection a court will provide.

With the advent of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”), no state categorically denies trade-secrets status to customer lists. That’s because the default definition of a “trade secret” under the UTSA includes compilations of information, and several states modified the default definition to explicitly include customer lists as potential trade secrets. See, e.g., Conn Gen. Stat. § 35-51(d); O.C.G.A. § 10-1-761(4); Or. Rev. Stat. § 646.461(4); 12 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 5302. Other states opted to mention that a “listing of names, addresses, or telephone numbers” may qualify as a trade secret if the listing, like any trade secret, has independent economic value because it is not readily ascertainable and is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.  See, e.g., Co. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 7-74-102(4); Oh. Rev. Code Ann. § 1333.61(D).

States still, however, apply varying degrees of scrutiny before conceding that customer lists constitute a trade secret. In more skeptical jurisdictions, courts decline to confer trade-secrets status on customer lists for one of three reasons.
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