# Name the Secret or Lose: Double Eagle Alloys v. Hooper and the Particularity Trap

> The Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment against a metals distributor that could not describe its trade secrets with enough particularity or show it kept them secret.

Topic: Trade Secrets  |  Author: Lidiia Levitska  |  Source: Intellectual Property Law (outsideipcounsel.com)
Canonical: https://outsideipcounsel.com/blog/double-eagle-alloys-v-hooper/


A departing salesman who copies 2,660 files to an external drive looks like a textbook trade-secret defendant. Yet in *Double Eagle Alloys, Inc. v. Hooper*, 134 F.4th 1078 (10th Cir. 2025), the Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the employee and his new employer — because the company that lost the files could never say, with the precision the law demands, what its secrets actually were. The decision, authored by Circuit Judge Gregory A. Phillips for a panel that also included Judges Bacharach and Seymour, is a cautionary tale about the difference between data that walks out the door and data that the law will protect.

## At a glance

- **Case:** *Double Eagle Alloys, Inc. v. Hooper*, No. 24-5089 (10th Cir. Apr. 22, 2025), 134 F.4th 1078.
- **Court:** U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; opinion by Judge Gregory A. Phillips, joined by Judges Bacharach and Seymour. On appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma (Judge John D. Russell).
- **Posture:** Appeal from summary judgment for the defendants on claims under the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Oklahoma Uniform Trade Secrets Act, plus related theories.
- **Holding:** Double Eagle failed to identify its claimed trade secrets with sufficient particularity and failed to show the information derived independent economic value from secrecy or was subject to reasonable secrecy measures.
- **Significance:** Reinforces that trade-secret plaintiffs must define their secrets precisely and prove genuine secrecy; copying files is not misappropriation if the files are not protectable secrets.

## Decades of files, three categories of "secrets"

Double Eagle Alloys and Ace Alloys are competing distributors of specialty metals for the oil-and-gas industry. Michael Hooper spent decades at Double Eagle, including five years as an inside sales manager, before leaving to join Ace. On his way out he downloaded thousands of digital files — by the court's count, some 2,660 — to an external storage device. Double Eagle sued under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Oklahoma Uniform Trade Secrets Act, alleging Hooper and Ace had misappropriated its trade secrets.

On summary judgment, the litigation narrowed to three categories of claimed secrets: material specifications, pricing information, and customer drawings. That narrowing proved fatal. To survive, Double Eagle had to do two things for each category: describe the secret with particularity, and produce evidence that it derived independent economic value from not being generally known and was the subject of reasonable efforts to keep it secret. On the summary-judgment record, the company could do neither.

## The particularity requirement

The Tenth Circuit's first and most important holding concerns identification. A trade-secret plaintiff must "describe the subject matter of the trade secret with sufficient particularity to separate it from matters of general knowledge in the trade." That requirement is not a pleading technicality; it is what allows a court and a jury to test whether something secret was actually taken. Double Eagle largely gestured at broad buckets — its specifications, its pricing, its drawings — without isolating what, within those buckets, was uniquely its own rather than the common knowledge and skill of anyone in the specialty-metals trade.

The court was particularly unimpressed with the material specifications. Double Eagle offered no evidence describing the significance of the specifications, the time and effort behind them, the competitive advantage they conferred, or what made them unique. Worse, the undisputed record showed that the company had publicly posted aspects of those specifications on its own website. Information a company broadcasts to the world cannot simultaneously be a secret it guards, and a plaintiff cannot cure that defect by pointing vaguely at the category as a whole.

## Secrecy must be real and ongoing

The pricing and customer-drawing categories failed on the related ground of secrecy. The DTSA and its Oklahoma counterpart protect information only if its owner has "taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret" and the information "derives independent economic value … from not being generally known." Double Eagle's pricing and drawings had been shared outside the company — with customers, vendors, or third parties — without the kind of controls that preserve secrecy. Once information circulates beyond the circle of those bound to protect it, its claim to trade-secret status erodes.

The lesson the panel drove home is that secrecy is a practice, not a label. Calling a document "confidential," or feeling that pricing is sensitive, does not make it a trade secret. The owner must show concrete measures — access restrictions, nondisclosure agreements, segregation of confidential material, limits on publication — and must be able to connect those measures to the specific information it claims. Double Eagle's general assertions of value and secrecy, untethered from particular, well-guarded information, could not raise a triable issue.

## Open questions

- **How specific is specific enough?** The opinion demands particularity but, like most such cases, does not fix a bright line; how granular a description a plaintiff must offer will continue to vary by trade and record.
- **When does limited external sharing destroy secrecy?** Sharing with NDA-bound customers may preserve secrecy, while uncontrolled disclosure destroys it; the dividing line in mixed records remains fact-intensive.
- **Does file volume ever matter?** The court treated the theft of thousands of files as irrelevant to protectability; whether sheer scale or aggregation can ever supply value or particularity was left for another day.

## Implications

- **Identify before you litigate.** Plaintiffs should be able to list, with specificity, exactly which documents or data points are secret and why, before filing — not improvise categories at summary judgment.
- **Do not publish your own secrets.** Specifications posted on a public website are not recoverable as trade secrets; audit public-facing materials before claiming them.
- **Control external sharing.** Pricing and drawings shared with customers or vendors need NDAs and access controls, or they lose protection.
- **Copying is not misappropriation.** A departing employee taking thousands of files creates litigation risk, but liability still requires that the files contain protectable secrets.
- **Build the secrecy record early.** Reasonable measures — marking, segregation, access limits — should exist before a dispute, because they are what summary judgment tests.

## Frequently asked questions

**Why did Double Eagle lose even though its former employee took thousands of files?**
Taking files is not the same as taking trade secrets. The Tenth Circuit held that Double Eagle never identified its claimed secrets with enough particularity and could not show the information derived value from being secret. Some of it was posted on the company's own website or shared with customers and vendors.

**What does it mean to identify a trade secret with particularity?**
A plaintiff must describe the claimed secret specifically enough to distinguish it from general knowledge and skill in the trade. Pointing to broad categories like specifications, pricing, and customer drawings, without showing what is uniquely secret about them, is not enough to survive summary judgment.

**What should employers do to protect specifications and pricing?**
Treat secrecy as an ongoing practice, not a label. Limit access, mark and segregate confidential material, avoid publishing specifications on public websites, use NDAs with customers and vendors, and be prepared to articulate exactly what is secret and why it has value.

## Authorities and sources

- Opinion (Justia), *Double Eagle Alloys, Inc. v. Hooper*, No. 24-5089: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/24-5089/24-5089-2025-04-22.html
- Tenth Circuit case page (No. 24-5089): https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinion/24-5089
- Opinion (FindLaw): https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-10th-circuit/117192438.html
- Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1839 (definitions) (Cornell LII): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1839
- Littler analysis, "Tenth Circuit Affirms Summary Judgment Due to Plaintiff's Failure to Sufficiently Establish Existence of Trade Secrets": https://www.littler.com/news-analysis/asap/tenth-circuit-affirms-summary-judgment-due-plaintiffs-failure-sufficiently