Employer is telling me to violate IP law. How can I protect myself?
I don’t want to give too many identifying details, but to cut a long story short the CEO, MD and my line manager have all repeatedly told me to use another company’s trademarks in various materials, in a way that the other company has very clearly told us would violate their Ts and Cs and naturally comes with various documented legal consequences.
I’m obviously not happy about it, and to be honest haven’t enjoyed being constantly pressured about it either.
I’ve got a meeting at 9am tomorrow where I know they’re going to tell me again that I have to do it, so I want to work out if there’s anything I can do to protect myself (the CEO, for context, is a very unpleasant person who has previously bragged about being taken to court so he’ll probably have no fear of violating employment law at all on his end - and will happily throw me under the bus when legal consequences arrive for violating the IP laws).
For context, everyone involved in tomorrow’s meeting already knows the use of the IP would be illegal, and I’m the one who specifically told them all it would be.
Anything I can do here? At the moment all I can come up with is sending them all an email during the meeting saying I’m officially refusing their request to conduct illegal activity so it’s in writing? Should I copy in my personal email address in case they retaliate straight away and I lose access or does that cause me legal issues?
Posted Jun 22, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC