The American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (AIPLA) Trade Secret Committee (of which partner Erik Weibust is Vice Chair) is taking its annual Trade Secret Law Summit online this year, with a series of weekly webinars. The first of the series, on Wednesday, August 12, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. EST, features partner Scott Humphrey, who will
Courts Across the Country Continue to Address Trade Secrets Issues
The “return to normal” in courts across the country has brought with it a flurry of trade secrets decisions that address some interesting and instructive issues, both procedurally and substantively. In the last ten days alone, courts in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas have weighed in on issues such as the specificity necessary to assert a viable trade secrets claim, the enforceability of a restrictive covenant against an employee who is laid off temporarily but quickly finds a new role and is rehired by the same organization, and the validity of a $700,000,000 jury verdict that was based on a jury question that combined multiple theories of liability. Let’s take a look:
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Security From Afar: How Best to Protect Trade Secrets in a World of Remote Working, Zoombombing, and Uncertainty
Social distancing, a term which few of us had heard of before this year (despite the fact that it has been used since at least the early 2000s), is stretching into its third month. Notwithstanding some loosening of shelter-in-place advisories, and the fact that some employers are starting to open up offices and invite their workforce back in, a majority of employees are still working from home. This has broad implications for protection of employers’ trade secrets and confidential information—in many cases, a company’s most precious asset.
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A Decade of Data Whets the Appetite for Data Nerds: Lex Machina Releases 2020 Report on Trade Secret Litigation
Legal analytics powerhouse Lex Machina recently released its 2020 Trade Secret Litigation Report, which highlights federal litigation trends in the last decade, as well as the last year specifically. While it’s very much an open question whether these trends will continue in light of the COVID-19 pandemic (more on that in our next post), the report identifies some interesting data. In addition to some of the highlights contained in the official report, a deep dive of Lex Machina’s case repository reveals even more granular trends, demonstrating the wealth of information that can be gleaned and theories that can be tested from the data compiled from the more than 1.7 million federal cases in Lex Machina’s database. In fact, we have to admit that many of our own assumptions were turned upside down upon digging into the voluminous data available on the Lex Machina website! Expect to see a guest post from Lex Machina soon explaining how this data is sourced and what subscribers can do with it.
Some of the key findings in the report and/or associated data:
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Trade Secret Litigation on the Rise in California: How ADR Can Help
As a special feature of our blog—guest postings by experts, clients, and other professionals—please enjoy this blog entry from Hon. Elizabeth D. Laporte (Ret.).
Trade secret litigation in California is growing, in both volume and impact. The second-largest plaintiffs’ verdict in 2019 was $845 million, as reported by the Daily Journal, which was awarded to ASML, a Dutch semiconductor chip processing software company, in its case against XTAL, a company founded by two ex-employees of the plaintiff’s subsidiary in Santa Clara who allegedly worked in secret for XTAL using stolen trade secrets to get a head start in development and siphon off a major customer contract (ASML US Inc. v. XTAL Inc.). Another large verdict was a $66 million jury award, including a worldwide injunction, given to a San Jose LED manufacturer that sued a company for allegedly poaching its top scientist so that it could transfer its technology to China (Lumileds LLC v. Elec-Tech International Co. Ltd.). In these types of cases, plaintiffs have the advantage of being able to craft a compelling narrative of theft—most commonly, former employees surreptitiously appropriating the plaintiff company’s trade secrets for their own benefit in a rival venture—and to overcome employees’ general freedom to switch employers under California law, which voids almost all non-compete agreements (Bus. & Prof. Code Sec. 16600) and does not recognize the doctrine of inevitable disclosure (Schlage Lock Company v. Whyte, 101 Cal.App.4th 1443 (2002)). Moreover, trade secrets do not expire automatically; they allow broad protection without disclosure, unlike copyrights and patents.
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Trade Secret Litigation: Activity on the Rise
As a special feature of our blog—guest postings by experts, clients, and other professionals—please enjoy this blog entry from Neil Eisgruber, Director in the Disputes, Compliance & Investigations group at Stout.
For decades, companies have turned to federal courts to protect valuable business assets, such as trade secrets. Legal action has expanded over the years and recent trends have set the foundation for a continuing surge in federal trade secret litigation.
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Emergency Injunction Not in the Cards? Damages May Be Your Winning Hand
As we have previously reported, courts across the country are adjourning most appearances, including trials, and hearing only “emergency matters” during the current COVID-19 crisis. As a result, obtaining emergency injunctive relief may be more difficult than in normal circumstances. And attempting to obtain injunctive relief to enforce non-compete agreements against employees who are laid off, while permissible in a majority of states, may be particularly difficult now given that we are quickly entering (if not already in) a period of high unemployment. At the same time, some employers are loosening security measures in the name of convenience and efficiency for remote workers, potentially making trade secret misappropriation easier (we have provided tips for avoiding just that). But that does not mean employers are out of luck if an employee (or someone else) misappropriates its trade secrets or steals its customers. Companies that are genuinely and immediately harmed by trade secret misappropriation and breach of restrictive covenants should still seriously consider seeking injunctive relief, particularly if the activity is causing significant harm to their business. Damages are always an available, if not immediate, remedy, however, where injunctive relief may not be practical.
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Love in the Time of Coronavirus: Protecting Trade Secrets During a Pandemic
Fear of the coronavirus is causing many employers to permit—or in some cases mandate—employees to work remotely. While this measure is designed to minimize the risk of virus transmission, it presents an altogether different risk when it comes to protecting trade secrets, as employees have ripe opportunities to remove trade secrets and other sensitive information from company systems and databases. While remote access is ostensibly provided so that employees can perform their job functions from home, and may even be a necessity in that regard, some employees may take the opportunity to exploit the situation to more nefarious ends, and others may just be careless, which can lead to equally bad outcomes. In addition, employees’ external home networks may not have robust security on par with in-office network security.
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Pardon Me, Co-Packaging Partner Accused of Stealing Dijon Mustard Recipes
On February 25, 2020, Plaintiff Mustard Girl LLC (“Mustard Girl”), an award-winning mustard manufacturer, filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County for damages against its former co-packing partner, Olds Products Co. of Illinois, LLC (“Olds”), for misappropriation of trade secrets and other derivative claims. According to Mustard Girl, Olds engaged in a multi-year scheme to steal Mustard Girl’s recipes and then use those recipes to sell its own mustard products at lower cost to Mustard Girl’s largest accounts.
This mustard dispute presents a common trade secrets misappropriation scenario—the alleged misappropriator had lawful access to the trade secrets but then misused its access for an improper purpose. An additional wrinkle in this case is that Mustard Girl provided the mustard recipes to Olds under a confidentiality agreement, but admittedly lacks a counter-signed copy. Proving that reasonable measures were taken to keep trade secrets protected is necessary to prevail on a claim for misappropriation. If Mustard Girl is unable to prove that the recipes were provided to Olds under a confidentiality agreement, it may face a significant hurdle in proving that its recipes are, in fact, trade secrets.
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Upcoming Webinar! 2019 Year in Review: What You Need to Know About the Recent Cases and Developments in Trade Secrets, Non-Competes, and Computer Fraud for 2020
On Tuesday, January 28 at 12:00 p.m. Central, in the first installment of the 2020 Trade Secrets Webinar Series, Seyfarth attorneys will review noteworthy legislation, cases and other legal developments from across the nation over the last year in the area of trade secrets and data theft, non-competes and other restrictive covenants, and computer fraud.