Pennsylvania State University Floating Solar Panel Case Study Questions

respond to this prompt.

You are the HR Director for Floating Solar Panel, Inc. (FSP), a California-based company specializing in floating solar panel technology. From its inception, FSP has required all employees to sign a trade secret and confidentiality agreement covering all data developed and reviewed in the course of their FSP employment. Last month, one of FSP’s senior researchers, Claudio Moran (Moran), resigned to start his own competing company. It appears that before leaving FSP, Moran copied all of his department’s research data. Based on documents that FSP has since received from a customer, it appears that Moran took the data with him and is using it in his new enterprise.

FSP has learned that prior to his departure, Moran figured out how to access confidential employee medical and health insurance files, including data that FSP had received from the health insurance plan that covers FSP employees. Although he had no permission to do so, Moran downloaded information about medical treatment that his former wife received during her own employment with FSP. Rumor has it that he plans to use that material in a pending child custody dispute and that he’s threatened to embarrass his ex-wife by posting some of the data on his social media sites and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, Moran was able to continue to access FSP computers after his departure by persuading his former coworker Angie Tech to share her password. It appears that Moran has used that information to access and delete all of FSP’s data related to an ongoing research project.

FSP has asked you to search the company laptop that Moran turned in when he resigned. While the articulated goal is to see whether he contacted FSP customers before his departure, you’ve been told to read everything that you can access. When you started that review, you discovered that you could see both old and incoming personal email messages to Moran’s personal Gmail account. Based on a lucky guess, you’ve also been able to open a password-protected file that contains Moran’s passwords to all of his personal social media accounts. That information, in turn, has allowed you to see what Moran is posting on sites otherwise only accessible to his designated “friends.”

You recall that Moran was issued a company handbook as part of his FSP job offer and that he may have signed some additional agreements at that time, but you don’t remember what they covered.

Discuss The Following

Describe the legal issues that relate to Moran’s conduct and rumored plans and the laws that govern those issues.

What remedies might FSP have in light of those laws? How would a court be likely to rule based on what we know at this point? Why would the court come to that conclusion?

What else do you need to know to better respond to the questions above about Moran’s conduct and rumored plans?

Describe the legal issues that relate to FSP’s potential liability related to Moran’s conduct and rumored plans and the laws that govern those issues.

What liability could FSP face in light of those laws? How would a court be likely to rule based on what we know at this point? Why would the court come to that conclusion?

What else do you need to know to better respond to the questions above about FPS’s potential liability?

Describe the legal issues that relate to your review of Moran’s laptop, email, and social media sites and the laws that govern those issues.

What liability could you and FSP face in light of those laws? How would a court be likely to rule based on what we know at this point? Why would the court come to that conclusion?

What else do you need to know to better respond to the questions above about the laptop, email, and social media site review?