delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is au appeal from an order sustaining a demurrer to the bill of complaint filed by appellant, and dissolving a preliminary injunction which hаd been previously granted.
The allegations of the bill, so far as it is necessary to recite them, are substantially as follows:
That plaintiff is a corporation. engaged in the general laundry business at No. 1719 East .Oliver Street in Baltimore City; that the most valuable asset of the said business is the good will thereof which has been created by a course of dealing with customers for a number of years, which customers wеre secured only after great labor and expense; that plaintiff draws business from all that portion of said city lying east of Charles Street, which section is divided by plaintiff into districts or routes, one of which is designated No. 6; that a driver, who also acts as a solicitor for new work, is assigned to each route and is given a list of customers thereon from whom he receives laundry bundles which he takes to the plаnt and which, after they are laundered, he returns to the customer and collects the charges thereon; that the expenses of' maintaining the route, are borne by plaintiff; that the defendant has for three years been employed by plaintiff as a driver and assigned to route' No. 6; that the defendant was a trusted employee, and while iu the service of plaintiff acquired knowledge of, and access to, all the customers of plaintiff on said route; .that the defendant left the employ of plaintiff on September 3d, 1921, without any-previous notice and without any opportunity to the plaintiff to procure another driver for said route; that while iu the employ оf plaintiff and without its knowledge; or permission, defendant .advised customers of plaintiff on said route that he intended to go into business for himsеlf and induced them to substitute his service for that of plaintiff, and on the 5th day of September, abusing the confidence imposed in him, collected laundry bundles from about forty-five of plaintiff’s customers on said route, which number represents about ninety per cent of those whо usually send *361 their work to plaintiff on tlie first trip Monday morning, and turned the work over to some other laundry; that defendant was able to do this because of the knowledge of plaintiff’s customers acquired by him while in its service and by virtue of bis representation of it; that a few days befоre leaving plaintiff’s employ defendant told plaintiff he had no intention of leaving, and at that time was undermining its business by attempting to entice its customers away from it; that if he is permitted to solicit the business and patronage of plaintiff on said route, great and irreparаble damage will be done to plaintiff in its said business.
The theory of appellant is that the list of customers of appellant is a trade secret, and that an employee who has obtained the names of customers and lias acquired his good standing with them by reason оf the opportunity derived from his employment, should not he permitted to use such information, or capitalize his popularity thus aсquired, to the injury of his employer after tlie termination of his service.
We have been referred to no decisions of this Court, nor have we been able to find any, bearing directly on this question.
The decisions in this country and in England seem to be fairly harmonious in principle as to the duty of courts fi> protect owners of trade secrets from disclosure by employees, but tbe divergences begin when tbe question to be determined in particular cases is, whether the thing sought to be protected should be classed as a trade secret. And this is the rеal question presented in this case.
A thing can hardly be said to bo a secret, in the sense that it should be guarded by a court of equity, which is susceptible of discovery by observation, and which is open to the observation of any one who thinks it worth while to observe;.
In this casе it was not necessary for the new employer of appellee to seek his services in order to obtain the names of аppellant’s customers whom appellee served. He could obtain this information by tbe simple process of observing *362 each day for a week where he stopped on his daily rounds. We have no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that there is no trade sеcret involved in this case.
We have been referred to several California, decisions- and to two decisions by the intermediate court of New York, and to an English case, which support the view contended for by appellant.
Empire Steam Laundry
v.
Lozier, 165
Cal. 95;
Lamb v. Evans,
L. R. (1893), 1 Ch. Div. 218;
People’s Supply Company
v.
Light,
•It is a significant fact'that very few cases are to be'.found on either side of this proposition.' That would seem to. indicate that few attempts, have been made by employers to invoke the principle contended for.by aрpellant. ... -
*363 Of course, there is nothing to prevent an employer from expressly contracting with his employee that the latter shall not, on leaving the employer’s service, solicit business in the same line from the customers of the employer in a particular territory, and, if by reason of the nature of the laundry business such protection is necessary, it can easily be secured by such contraсts.
While the case of
Rosenstein
v.
Zenlz,
Order affirmed, with costs to appellee.
Judge Offutt dissents.