Q: Can I contact business cards I collected at a previous employer?

A: California protects employees who move on from one employer to another and allows that employee to fairly compete in the same market as long as the employee does not engage in unfair competition, including use confidential information garnered from the prior employer. Generally business cards are not going to be confidential information especially if you can get the contact information on those cards from other publicly available sources.

Good luck to you.

A: I agree with Mr. Pedersen, mostly. But California also protects employers from employees who take their trade secrets to use in direct competition with them. Did you sign a trade secret and confidential information agreement with the former employer? If you did, then all information that you gained during your employment belongs to the employer, not to you, and they could bring an Unfair Competition Law action against you to have you disgorge all money or profit you receive from contacting the leads you got while working with them. This is the downside to it all. Generate an independent list from your memory without using any cards, find them on the internet and begin to do business with them. The list with a date on your computer is your evidence that you did not use proprietary information in creating a customer list. Customer lists can be trade secrets or confidential information the same as a drug formula.

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