Misappropriation, the architecture of trade-secret damages, and the causation problems that decide nine- and ten-figure verdicts.
A former president took CGW's pricing and customer files, yet the court denied an injunction because the company took almost no measures to guard the data.
The Third Circuit held lawful possession, not title, lets a plaintiff sue for trade-secret misappropriation under Pennsylvania law, affirming a $3.1M award.
The Eighth Circuit held that trade secret misappropriation can be pled on information and belief when the proof sits in the defendant's sole control.
A California court held secret, patentable design concepts disclosed under an NDA can be trade secrets, affirming a judgment over $1.5M plus fees.
The Federal Circuit voided reissue handguard claims for lack of written description while finding a trade secret could cover what the patent never disclosed.
A Pennsylvania federal court refused to enjoin the FTC's non-compete rule, splitting with Texas on the agency's power. The rule later died anyway.
Judge Posner upholds the loss of a trade-secret verdict, explaining that a process published in a patent application ordinarily loses secrecy and that BondPro showed no measurable value.
The Federal Circuit upheld a $57.6M NDA-breach verdict even though the underlying patent was invalid as anticipated, showing contracts can beat patents.
The Ninth Circuit reversed an injunction over published tubular lock key codes, holding reverse engineering by lawful owners is not improper means.
A DTSA seizure applicant stumbles at the threshold: the customer list was never shown to be a trade secret, so proof of copying alone could not carry it.
The Fourth Circuit holds the Defend Trade Secrets Act can apply extraterritorially where a US-based act furthers the theft, reaching a Dutch former distributor.
A New York court enjoined two executives who plotted a competing ad venture, but capped the injunction at six months because internet secrets go stale fast.
Washington's Supreme Court held that a memorized customer list can be a trade secret. The form of the information is legally irrelevant under the UTSA.
The Seventh Circuit kept $140M in trade-secret compensatory damages but held $280M in punitives constitutionally excessive, even under a state statutory cap.
Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment against a plaintiff that shared technology with no NDA: zero precautions fails the reasonable-measures test.
The Ninth Circuit held trade-secret identification is usually a fact question, and one secret described with particularity defeats early summary judgment.
The ITC banned imports of a Botox competitor for 21 months over trade-secret theft between Korean companies abroad, while reversing the strain-secrecy finding.
How a chocolate chip cookie recipe guarded by lock and key qualified as a Massachusetts trade secret, and why the secret element decided the case.
Illinois's Supreme Court tied non-compete enforceability to a legitimate business interest judged by the totality of the circumstances, rejecting rigid tests.
The Seventh Circuit backed an engineer, holding an abandoned 2002 actuator prototype was too broad to be a concrete secret and its later use unreasonable.
A Utah federal court granted a rare DTSA ex parte seizure, persuaded by defendants who deleted data, used false identities, and would evade an ordinary order.
An Illinois federal court held that alleging ex-employees know your secrets and joined a rival does not state a threatened-misappropriation claim.
The first court to read the DTSA's whistleblower immunity treated it as an affirmative defense, not a pleading-stage shield, and let the suit proceed.
The Second Circuit upheld EEA and NSPA convictions because a trader stole code on paper, distinguishing Aleynikov and exposing gaps Congress later closed.
The Third Circuit's Taxol sting ruling holds attempt and conspiracy under the Economic Espionage Act need no actual trade secret, so stings can use decoys.
A 1959 court held Listerine's maker owed royalties on an 1881 secret-formula contract even after the formula went public, because the contract set duration.
Pennsylvania's top court refused to enjoin a chemist with no confidentiality agreement from using formulas he developed, drawing the line on employee knowledge.
The Ninth Circuit measured a trade-secret injunction by the lead time the theft bought, capping relief at the head start, not a permanent ban.
The largest damages award in Virginia history was set aside over four trial errors, and the whole case goes back for a new trial. A masterclass in trade-secret causation, and a warning that revenue is not damages.
The Fifth Circuit held that a trade secret can live in a novel combination of publicly known elements, and that sharing information with a few partners need not destroy its secrecy.
The Supreme Court scrapped the decades-old 'substantial competitive harm' test and held that commercial data is confidential under FOIA Exemption 4 when it is kept private and shared with the government in confidence.
Hawaii's Supreme Court adopted the majority view that the Uniform Trade Secrets Act displaces tort claims built on misused confidential information, even when that information is not a statutory trade secret.
Weeks after the Defend Trade Secrets Act became law, a California court granted one of its first restraining orders against a departing employee, and nobody reached for the statute's dramatic ex parte seizure remedy.
The Seventh Circuit refused to enforce a confidentiality agreement because the company took no other steps to guard its tablet-enclosure designs, holding that an NDA without reasonable secrecy measures is worthless.
The First Circuit enforced a Massachusetts noncompete against an executive who fled to California, holding that moving to a noncompete-banning state does not automatically defeat another state's law.
The First Circuit voided a tax firm's nondisclosure agreement as too sweeping and tossed its trade-secret verdict, holding that an NDA that bars general knowledge functions like an illegal noncompete.
The Eleventh Circuit held that scraping a public database with a bot can be improper means of acquiring a trade secret, even when any single piece of the data is free to view.
The Seventh Circuit upheld a $407 million DTSA award based on worldwide sales, holding the trade-secret statute reaches foreign misappropriation when an act in furtherance occurs in the United States.
The decision that rejected the inevitable disclosure doctrine in California, holding it an after-the-fact noncompete that collides with the state's protection of employee mobility.
The Tenth Circuit affirmed summary judgment against a metals distributor that could not describe its trade secrets with enough particularity or show they were not readily ascertainable.
A California appellate court held that a trade-secret plaintiff can win an injunction and fees without proving damages, and that the cost of stopping the misappropriation is recoverable actual loss.
The Ninth Circuit held the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act does not force plaintiffs to identify secrets with reasonable particularity before discovery, splitting from California's state-law rule.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed a $168 million trade-secret judgment against Tata, endorsing unjust-enrichment damages based on the development costs a misappropriator avoided.
The Fifth Circuit's 1974 ruling gave trade-secret law its flexible reasonable-royalty measure, letting plaintiffs recover the value of what the thief took even when the defendant earned no profit.
A star self-driving engineer downloaded 14,000 Google files, jumped to Uber, and pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft, drawing 18 months before a presidential pardon.
How a former Boeing engineer with 300,000 stashed documents became the first person convicted at trial of economic espionage for China, and what the Ninth Circuit affirmed.
The Fourth Circuit affirms dismissal of a DTSA complaint that defined its trade secrets three ways, holding that sweeping definitions fail the particularity that the statute's secrecy and value elements presuppose.
The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of a software trade-secret claim because the owner delegated access control to a licensee and never required anyone downstream to keep the secret.
How a Massachusetts jury found a competing insulin-patch maker liable for misappropriating Omnipod design secrets, and why the court then cut the award by nearly 90 percent.
The Ninth Circuit endorses a continued-use theory under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, then holds that Google's published patent applications extinguished the very secret the plaintiff needed.
Predicting Ohio law, the Sixth Circuit held that the Uniform Trade Secrets Act does not displace a plain breach-of-contract claim, a reading that restores the statute's savings clause and its promise of uniformity.
The SEC's largest stand-alone Rule 21F-17(a) settlement turned a routine settlement-release clause into an enforcement event, showing that NDAs are now read for what they silence, not just what they protect.
The Sixth Circuit affirmed a multimillion-dollar trade-secret verdict against a competitor that hired away a director of research and acquired, with him, a decade of curated broccoli-extract know-how.
A Texas federal court set aside the FTC's nationwide non-compete ban for lack of rulemaking authority, and the agency ultimately let the vacatur stand, leaving trade-secret law as employers' primary backstop.
A departing executive who never took a document could still be enjoined. The Seventh Circuit's 1995 ruling let an employer prove misappropriation by showing disclosure was inevitable, and the country has been divided over it ever since.
An early decision construing the Defend Trade Secrets Act's ex parte civil seizure remedy denies the order as unnecessary, modeling the preservation-and-TRO path most courts now follow.
A Coca-Cola chemist's theft of $120 million in BPA-free coating formulas produced one of the rare convictions under the Economic Espionage Act's foreign-government provision, and a Sixth Circuit opinion clarifying what the government must prove.
A half-century after the Supreme Court blessed trade secrets, Kewanee Oil v. Bicron remains the clearest map of when to file and when to keep quiet.
A Washington federal court holds that the Defend Trade Secrets Act reaches a foreign defendant whenever an act in furtherance occurs in the United States, even an act the defendant did not commit.
A Northern District of New York court denied a trade-secret injunction where a former employee's new employer plausibly reverse-engineered publicly available parts, and the plaintiff could not prove its specifications were secret or improperly taken.
When Stiffel's lamp patents were held invalid, the Supreme Court ruled that no state unfair-competition law could stop Sears from copying the unpatented design, establishing that exclusivity flows only from the federal patent bargain.
The Tenth Circuit, in an opinion by then-Judge Gorsuch, upheld a $2.92 million reasonable-royalty award for stolen source code, confirming that a misappropriator can owe royalty damages for mere disclosure, with no proof of commercial use.
A California consultant who sold DuPont's chloride-route titanium-dioxide process to Chinese state firms became the first defendant convicted by a jury under the economic-espionage section of the EEA. The Ninth Circuit affirmed those counts, but reversed two obstruction-related convictions and vacated his sentence.
Judge Posner explained why a container design disclosed in a bid (conceded not to be a trade secret and outside the parties' logistics-only nondisclosure agreement) was free for the recipient to use.
A federal court let an IBM executive walk straight to Hewlett-Packard, holding that a doctrine New York entertains in theory fails without particularized secrets, near-identical roles, and proof of bad faith.
The Second Circuit vacated a roughly $285 million unjust-enrichment award, holding that avoided development costs were unavailable because Syntel's only unjust gain was already addressed in computing TriZetto's actual loss.
A Utah court granted a DTSA ex parte seizure where the defendants had supplied false information, hidden and moved files, and possessed the technical skill to defeat an ordinary injunction, a rare case clearing the statute's high bar.
New York's high court refused to void an overbroad non-compete outright, instead narrowing it to the clients the employee personally served and articulating the state's modern reasonableness test.
A federal court kept a trade-secret suit against a Chinese competitor in Illinois, finding the defendant had not shown China an available and adequate forum, against the backdrop of the DTSA's reach and a worldwide TRO.
An Eastern District of Virginia bench trial inventoried what reasonable measures look like in practice, then found misappropriation in only two of eighteen alleged disclosures.
The Third Circuit confirmed an arbitration award against a two-decade Sabre employee who launched a rival Chinese company while still on the payroll, including more than a million dollars in head-start damages.
The Seventh Circuit reinstated a jury's trade-secret verdict for a two-man toy startup, holding that economic value and reasonable secrecy measures are fact questions and that an oral confidentiality agreement can suffice.
The California Supreme Court held that under the UTSA, continued misuse of a trade secret after the initial theft is one continuing claim accruing at the first misappropriation, not a series of fresh claims.
A California appellate court voided an employer's sweeping confidentiality provisions as a de facto noncompete that barred a trader from his profession for life.
The Fourth District reversed summary adjudication to hold that California's trade-secret statute does not displace breach-of-contract, fiduciary-duty, conversion, and unfair-competition claims that rest on conduct independent of any misappropriation.
The Supreme Court held that trade secrets are property protected by the Takings Clause, but that the right exists only so long as the holder guards the secret and holds reasonable expectations of confidentiality.
The Ninth Circuit vacated the wholesale transfer of the billion-dollar Bratz brand to Mattel, holding that an employee-invention clause's reach over mere "ideas" was ambiguous and the equitable remedy grossly overbroad.
Judge Learned Hand held that an inventor who commercially exploits an invention in secret beyond the grace period forfeits the right to patent it, forcing a choice between trade-secret protection and the patent monopoly.
A California appellate panel voided an employee non-solicitation covenant under section 16600 and openly questioned the survival of Loral v. Moyes after Edwards.
The Eighth Circuit held that proprietary markings and confidentiality agreements were enough to keep aircraft-overhaul documents secret, even though much of their content was publicly available.
The fight over the recipe for Thomas' English Muffins produced a Third Circuit ruling that an employer need not prove disclosure is inevitable, only a substantial threat of trade secret misappropriation.
A unanimous Supreme Court struck down Florida's anti-plug-molding statute, holding that a state may not grant patent-like protection to an unpatented design already disclosed to the public, and explaining why trade-secret law survives the same test.
A California federal court refused to hold as a matter of law that a departing sales manager's LinkedIn contacts and exported customer database were not trade secrets, leaving the question for trial.
Judge Easterbrook held that a software company's forty-three-page, undifferentiated description of its medical-billing system failed to identify any trade secret with the specificity the law demands.
An Indiana court held that a Rule 65 temporary restraining order can authorize the seizure of a defendant's laptop to preserve trade-secret evidence, sidestepping the DTSA's stringent ex parte seizure provision entirely.
The ITC barred a Chinese chemical maker's imports for trade-secret theft committed in China, and the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court let the exclusion order stand despite a contrary result in Chinese courts.
The Seventh Circuit held that a would-be buyer who received a target's secret designs during acquisition negotiations and then built a competing product had breached a confidential relationship the law implied from the dealings themselves.
A former Motorola engineer caught at O'Hare with stolen telecom secrets was convicted of trade-secret theft but acquitted of economic espionage, illustrating how hard it is to prove intent to benefit a foreign government.
The Third Circuit vacated a baking-supply injunction because the district court never said precisely what the protected trade secrets were, a cautionary tale about identifying the secret before enjoining anyone.
The Federal Circuit dismantled a $48.8 million trade-secret disgorgement award on three fronts at once: who decides it, how to apportion among secrets, and how long the unjust-enrichment clock runs once reverse engineering becomes possible.
The Sixth District extended California's trade-secret displacement doctrine to claims over non-trade-secret data while holding that an end user who runs compiled software does not thereby 'use' the source-code secrets behind it.
The Ninth Circuit held that a proviso unambiguously ended an NDA's confidentiality obligations after two years, vacating a $60 million verdict because the jury never heard that defense.
The Supreme Court held that federal patent law does not bar a state-law contract requiring perpetual royalties on a keyholder design whose patent application was rejected, a foundational endorsement of the license-instead-of-patent strategy.
The Ninth Circuit held that a buffet chain's everyday recipes lacked novelty and secrecy-derived value, and that its loosely guarded training manuals were never reasonably protected, marking the outer boundary of what 'qualifies' under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
A 1970 Fifth Circuit decision held that aerial photography of a plant under construction was an improper means of acquiring a trade secret, even though the photographers committed no trespass, breached no confidence, and were never shown to have broken any other law.
California's first published decision squarely addressing trade-secret supersession held that the Uniform Trade Secrets Act displaces common-law tort claims resting on the same factual nucleus as the misappropriation theory.
The Seventh Circuit reversed summary judgment to hold that whether a trade-secret owner took 'reasonable' precautions is almost always a jury question turning on the balance of costs and benefits.
The Federal Circuit held that the International Trade Commission may bar imports based on trade-secret misappropriation occurring entirely in China, opening the ITC as a forum for cross-border theft.
The largest trade-secret award of its era measured the benefit Kolon gained from stolen Kevlar know-how, then collapsed because the jury never heard the evidence that might have shown the secrets were not secret at all.
The earliest civil seizure order under the Defend Trade Secrets Act issued only after a temporary restraining order failed, modeling seizure as the remedy of last resort rather than first resort.
The Second Circuit reversed a Goldman Sachs programmer's criminal conviction because the company's high-frequency trading code was not a product 'produced for or placed in' commerce, exposing a gap Congress closed within months.
A District of Massachusetts judge enjoined four former employees who walked to Nvidia after three of them copied AMD files to personal drives, one of them more than a million, holding that improper acquisition, not proven use, supports a trade-secret injunction.
A New York federal court refused to enjoin a departing internet executive and warned that inevitable disclosure should be invoked only in the rarest of cases, building the doctrine's most influential set of brakes.
The California Supreme Court held that Business and Professions Code section 16600 voids employee non-competes even when narrowly drawn, rejecting the Ninth Circuit's narrow-restraint gloss.
After four dismissals, the Third Circuit revived a microsphere drug-development trade-secret suit and gave the broadest appellate definition yet of what it means to 'use' a trade secret.
The Federal Circuit held that a disclosing party who ignored its NDA's written-designation protocol lost trade-secret protection at the moment of disclosure.
