Headshot of Charles Tait Graves

Charles Tait Graves

Adjunct Professor

Bio

Adjunct Professor Charles Tait Graves has taught a course on trade secret law since 2009. A partner at Wilson Sonsini in San Francisco, he has more than twenty-five years of experience handling countless trade secret matters in Silicon Valley and around the country.

Tait is also one of the nation’s most widely-cited writers on trade secret law.  His ideas have generated influential precedents and changed California law protecting mobile employees and the companies hiring them.  He has published widely on the theory, history, and practice of trade secret law.

Publications:

  • Co-author with Camilla A. Hrdy, “Workplace ‘Acquisition’ of Trade Secrets,” in Research Handbook on Trade Secrecy in Data and Data Infrastructure (Edward Elgar, ed. R. Dreyfuss, C. Morten, & K. Strandberg) (forthcoming 2026)
  • “What is Ready Acertainability?” 27 Tulane Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 1, 2025
  • “The Part for the Whole in Trade Secret Law,” 33 Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal 197, 2025
  • “Intentionality in Trade Secret Law,” 39 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 720, 2024
  • “Would a Successful FTC Noncompete Ban Reduce Lawsuits Against Employees Who Change Jobs?” 75 UC Law Journal 1441, 2024
  • “Curiosities of Standing in Trade Secret Law,” 20 Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property 159, 2023
  • “Questioning the Co-Worker Non-Solicitation Covenant,” 55 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 959, 2022
  • Co-author with Sonia K. Katyal, “From Trade Secrecy to Seclusion,” 109 Georgetown Law Journal 1337, 2021 (Winner of the 2022 McCarthy Institute award for best IP law review article of the year)
  • “Should California’s Film Script Cases be Merged into Trade Secret Law?” 44 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 21, 2020
  • “Preparing to Quit: Employee Competition versus Corporate Opportunity,” 41 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 333, 2020
  • Co-author with Robin Feldman, “Naked Price and Pharmaceutical Trade Secret Overreach,” 22 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 61, 2020
  • “Is the Copyright Act Inconsistent with the Law of Employee Invention Assignment Contracts?” 8 NYU Journal of Intellectual Property & Entertainment Law 1, 2019
  • “Is There an Empirical Basis for Predictions of Inevitable Disclosure?” 18 Wake Forest Journal of Business & Intellectual Property Law 190, 2018
  • Co-author with Elizabeth Tippett, “UTSA Preemption and the Public Domain: How Courts Have Overlooked Patent Preemption of State Law Claims Alleging Employee Wrongdoing,” 65 Rutgers Law Review 59, 2013; reprinted in Trade Secrets and Undisclosed Information, edited by S. Sandeen and E. Rowe, 2014
  • “Trade Secrecy and Common Law Confidentiality: The Problem of Multiple Regimes,” The Law and Theory of Trade Secrecy: A Handbook of Contemporary Research, edited by R. Dreyfuss and K. Strandberg, 2011
  • “Analyzing the Non-Competition Covenant as a Category of Intellectual Property Regulation,” 3 Hastings Science & Technology Law Journal 69, 2011
  • “Trade Secrets as Property: Theory and Consequences,” 15 Journal of Intellectual Property Law 39, 2008
  • “The Law of Negative Knowledge: A Critique,” 15 Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal 387, 2007
  • Co-author with B. Range, “Identification of Trade Secret Claims During Litigation: Solutions for a Ubiquitous Dispute,” 5 Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property 68, 2007
  • “Non-Public Information and California Tort Law: A Proposal for Harmonizing California’s Employee Mobility and Intellectual Property Regimes under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act,” 2006 UCLA Journal of Law & Technology 1, 2006
  • Co-author with J. DiBoise, “Do Strict Trade Secret and Non-Competition Rules Obstruct Innovation?” 1 Ohio State Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal 323, 2006 (symposium presentation)
  • “Bad Faith and the Public Domain: Requiring a Pre-Lawsuit Investigation of Potential Trade Secret Claims,” 8 Virginia Journal of Law & Technology 12, 2004
  • Co-author with Alexander Macgillivray, “Combination Trade Secrets and the Logic of Intellectual Property,” 20 Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal 261, 2004

From 2017-2020, Tait served as a co-chair of the drafting group on identification of trade secret claims for the Sedona Conference’s Working Group on trade secret law, an effort by judges, academics, and practitioners to promulgate recommendations on various aspects of the law. The resulting publication is The Sedona Conference, Commentary on the Proper Identification of Asserted Trade Secrets in Misappropriation Cases, 22 Sedona Conference Journal 223 (2021).

Education

  • UC College of the Law, San Francisco
    J.D., Cum Laude     1998

  • UC Berkeley
    B.S., with Honors     1994

Courses

  • IP State Law: Trade Secrets

Expertise