Here are the noteworthy trade secret, restrictive covenant and cybersecurity posts from the month of August (warning, there are a lot):
Defend Trade Secrets Act
- Munger Tolles’ Miriam Kim, Carolyn Hoecker Luedtke and Laura Smolowe have put together another fine summary of the trends they are tracking under the Defend Trade Secrets Act. There are several interesting findings in the summary. For example, state courts and state law remain the preferred forum and substantive law for trade secrets claimants, at least at this time. According to the summary, while 378 DTSA cases have been filed in federal and state courts, more than 515 complaints with trade secret claims have been filed with no DTSA claims in federal and state courts throughout the U.S. I have to admit that I was surprised by this finding, as I expected that litigants would be eager to secure a federal forum using the DTSA. I suspect that most of those state law cases involve restrictive covenants and that the plaintiffs are more comfortable with a local judge enforcing a non-compete or want to avoid entanglements arising from the DTSA’s limitations on injunctions. Or it might be that they simply want to go with the law they know best, which would be the more developed state trade secret law regime. In any event, a very interesting finding.
- One of the more recent (and unexpected) developments under the DTSA has been the number of motions to dismiss challenging DTSA claims. Olga May has a post for Fish & Richardson’s Litigation Blog detailing those decisions on those motions, which range from challenges to the specificity of the trade secrets pleaded to whether the complaint comports with the standards under Twombly and Iqbal.
- For an update on the modest number of ex parte seizure order filings under the DTSA, see Michael Renuad of Mintz Levn’s article in the National Law Journal.