Are you at risk of becoming the next employee hit with a multimillion-dollar judgment in favor of your former employer? With the sharp increase in the theft of corporate intellectual property—a recent report from Kroll found that this year, it surpassed the theft of physical assets for the first time—many employers are becoming more diligent about enforcing their rights against current and former employees. The moral of this story: Don’t fully commit to that startup venture you’ve been considering without knowing that your employer may claim the fruits of your labor as its own.

The stakes are high because if a court finds that you improperly exploited an opportunity that actually belonged to your employer, you’re sure to take a big financial hit. You may be ordered to disgorge all income or profit earned from the opportunity. You may have to pay all of your employer’s lost profits as a result of this new venture. Or you might be forced to turn over the opportunity and all of its profits.

As one example, DSC Communications Corp., a manufacturer of broadband access devices, obtained a $126 million judgment in 1997 against a former engineer and a marketing manager who, while still employed, founded a startup company, Next Level Communications, to develop a broadband device that the company thought would be of no interest to their employer. In that case, defendants argued that their employer chose to pursue one of the two alternative technologies they had identified (“hybrid fiber coax” versus “switched digital video”) that would permit signals to be carried not just for telephone, but also for Internet and television; and that they should have been permitted to pursue the alternative technology. After a three-week trial, the judgment was affirmed on appeal because the employees were found to have used corporate trade secrets in pursuing the switched digital video technology.

So, before you spend more late night hours trying to get that great new opportunity off the ground, ask yourself a series of questions to help determine if you’re going to have a problem launching your endeavor. And if you believe you can safely pursue the new opportunity, it’s a wise move to consult with an attorney to make sure your conclusion is the right one.

Do you have an employment agreement that would prevent you from pursuing the new business? Obviously that depends on the precise wording of the document, but many employers include “non-competition” provisions in employment papers or require executives to sign separate non-competition agreements. Courts generally will enforce such restrictions that are of a reasonable duration and that are reasonably limited in scope for both geography and defined restriction (e.g., prohibiting you from performing your same job for a direct competitor for six months in the territories in which you worked).

Are you using any of your employer’s assets or resources to develop this new opportunity? Think twice. Is your employer paying for your BlackBerry service, or did it purchase the laptop you have been using on nights and weekends to develop your idea? Did you get fully reimbursed for travel expenses on which you did work for your employer, but also networked for your new business? Will your employer have a basis to claim that you used some of its intellectual property or trade secrets in developing your new product or service? In a lawsuit, your former employer will allege any or all of those, and more, to try to show that you used its assets, and therefore the profits from this new venture belong to it.

Even if you are not using any of your employer’s resources and you are not subject to a non-competition agreement or other restriction on outside business activities, you still may not be able to freely pursue this new venture. Directors and officers whom the courts deem “fiduciaries” cannot pursue for themselves opportunities that belong to their employer.