Trial and Evidentiary Issues


On Thursday, March 14, 2024 and Friday, March 15, 2024, I will be speaking at the AIPLA 2024 Trade Secret Summit on three panels. The Trade Secret Summit has become one of the premiere trade secret law events, with thought leaders and trade secret experts meeting to debate and discuss key developments in trade secret

On Tuesday, January 30, 2024, I will be giving a one-hour Webinar/CLE for the Ohio State Bar Association (OSBA) entitled “Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Law Year in Review.”

As readers of this blog know, the number of trade secret and restrictive cases continues to grow each year. As a result, trade secret disputes and

Another busy month, lots of developments in high-profile trade secrets cases, the latest on the FTC’s proposed noncompete ban, and trade secret identification continues to bedevil the federal bench:

Noteworthy Defend Trade Secret Act and other federal decisions, articles and posts:

  • The mammoth jury verdict against Goodyear Tire & Rubber has been set aside. Readers will recall that punitive damages accounted for $62.1 million of the $65 million award, which I predicted would result in a remittitur reducing them under Ohio law. However, U.S. District Court Judge Sara Lioi of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio went a step further and set aside the entire jury verdict, reasoning that CODA Development had not sufficiently identified its trade secrets or that the information did not qualify as a trade secret. (Her opinion can be found at CODA Dev. v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.) Frankly, this was a stunning ruling, as Judge Lioi could have directed out these claims at trial and avoided the verdicts altogether, or she could have granted Goodyear’s motion for summary judgment on the same grounds last year. In her ruling, Judge Lioi defended her decision to dismiss the claims now, noting that she had expressed concern about the claims at trial and reserved the right to dismiss them later. Unfortunately, Judge Lioi’s ruling may encourage defendants to repeatedly challenge identification at every stage of the litigation and trial.
  • Other federal courts are requiring the identification of trade secrets with greater particularity at different junctures of litigation, as they grapple with whether the information before them deserves protection. In Dental Services v. Miller, a Seattle federal court denied a request for temporary restraining order, finding that the plaintiff had failed to provide “sufficient detail to establish a trade secret.” And in United Source One, Inc. v. Frank, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland denied a motion for a default judgment because the plaintiff failed to sufficiently describe two of the four trade secrets at issue in that case.
  • Plaintiffs frequently insist that there should be a presumption of irreparable harm when they are seeking an injunction. Not surprisingly, both the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Second Circuit and the Fifth Circuit have recently rejected those requests. In JTH Tax, LLC d/b/a Liberty Tax Service v. Agnant, the Second Circuit rejected a franchisor’s argument that a stipulation of irreparable harm in its franchise agreement created that presumption; see Davis Gilbert’s Neal Klausner’s post on that ruling. And in Direct Biologics L.L.C. v. McQueen, the Fifth Circuit held that courts applying Texas law can decline to apply a presumption of irreparable injury when there is no independent proof of harm. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rejection of that presumption, holding that not only did the employer fail to produce any evidence that the former employee disclosed or used its confidential information but that the evidence in fact showed the exact opposite (question: what good is a presumption if you have to also show proof?). For more on that opinion, see McDermott Will & Emery’s Alexander Piala’s post for Lexology and Eron Reid’s post for Seyfarth Shaw’s Trading Secrets Blog.
  • A mistrial was declared in another high-profile trade secret case pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after the jury acknowledged it was deadlocked over the claims before it. In that case, Masimo Corp. is seeking $1.8 billion in damages against Apple, as well as co-ownership of 5 Apple pulse oximetry patents that Masimo said use its technology. The case has already generated a number of noteworthy opinions, including one addressing the issue of separating an employee’s general skill and knowledge from trade secret information.
  • Questions over ownership of key trade secrets can derail a request for an injunction, as a plaintiff is learning in a New Jersey federal court. In JRM Construction Management, Inc. v. Plescia, the defendant was able to sufficiently dispute whether the trade secrets in question–Excel templates used to estimate and prepare final budgets for client project bids–were created by another company in the late 1990s. The defendants also challenged the confidentiality of the information because it was shared with customers who didn’t sign NDAs. Given these disputes over the central issues in the lawsuit, District Court Judge Evelyn Padin held that an injunction was premature and that “robust discovery” was needed.
  • Late to discover that a former employee may have used your trade secrets in a patent application? Then you should check out Robins Kaplan’s Sharon Roberg-Perez’s article for IAM analyzing a recent decision by the U.S. District Court for Delaware. In Illumina Inc v Guardant Health, et al., the court found the former employer Illumina had presented sufficient evidence of fraudulent concealment to toll the statute of limitations. The court found that there was evidence that former employees had taken steps to conceal their activities with regard to their new company Guardant, including anonymously incorporating the company when they were still Illumina employees. Moreover, according to Sharon, Guardant had removed the names of one of Illumina’s former employees from the applications prior to their issuance as patents.
  • Delaying your request for a preliminary injunction for 6 months because of discovery disputes can undermine the urgency of your request and claim of irreparable injury, at least according the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. In Partners Insight, LLC v. Gill, Judge Sheri Polster Chappel found this delay, coupled with waiting for 5 months to file the lawsuit, doomed the plaintiff’s request for an injunction.
  • A challenge to an NDA on the grounds that it was facially overbroad was rejected as premature by Judge Pamela Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. In AB Pratt & Co. v. Bridgeport Group, LLC, Judge Barker rejected a motion to dismiss the NDA and other claims, reasoning that any analysis of the scope and breadth of the NDA would involve a factually-intensive inquiry inappropriate at the motion to dismiss stage.
  • Looking for a primer on DTSA caselaw in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit? Then check out Houston Harbaugh’s Henry Sneath’s post for JDSupra.

Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (May 12, 2023): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Decisions, Posts and Articles

I have been invited by the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Law Section to speak on Thursday, April 13 at 3:00 p.m. in Washington, D.C. with Nicole Galli of ND Galli Law LLC, Procopio’s Mindy Morton and DecisionQuest’s Michael Biek, Ph.D. on the topic “Tips from the Trenches: Hot Issues and Best Practices in

On Tuesday, March 21, 2023, at 1 p.m. ET, I will be speaking with Nicole Galli of ND Galli Law LLC, Benesch’s Scott Humphrey, and DecisionQuest’s Michael Biek, Ph.D. for the Ohio State Bar Association’s CLE Live Interactive Webinar, “The Changing Shape of Trade Secret Trials: The Increasing Shift to Juries.”

Last year

Here are the noteworthy cases, articles and posts from last month, along with several DTSA cases from January that didn’t make it into last month’s update:

Notable Defend Trade Secrets Act and Federal Trade Secret Developments, Opinions and Posts:

  • For those interested in shaping an important trade secrets resource for the federal bench, Berkeley Professor Peter Menell is looking for comments to the Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide (TSJCMG), which is intended as a “go-to” resource for judges in these cases. In a post for Patently-O, Peter describes how the TSCMJG came into existence. He also discusses the unique qualities of trade secret cases that prompted the TSCMJG, including (1) the challenges of trade secret identification; (2) the highly emotional nature of trade secret cases, and (3) the interplay between criminal and civil proceedings in these cases. A number of trade secret luminaries (Vicki Cundiff, Jim Pooley, Peter Toren, Elizabeth Rowe, Rebecca Wexler and Professor Menell) have already contributed to its drafting, and for those interested in providing comments, please reach out to Peter at pmenell@law.berkeley.edu (please note he is working on a tight timeline).
  • Disputes over inventorship are not confined to patent cases and often arise in trade secrets cases too. However, that question does not guarantee federal subject matter jurisdiction, as the defendants learned in a decision remanding an ownership dispute removed to federal court back to state court. In Calvary Indus., Inc. v. Winters, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Judge Timothy Black rejected arguments that a state court declaratory relief action over the ownership of several disputed patent applications involved federal patent or trade secret claims and ruled that it belonged in state court. In particular, Judge Black found that declaratory relief for a correction of ownership under 35 U.S.C. § 256 was premature because no patents had yet issued.
  • Can a pleading citing “information and belief” for its allegations of misappropriation survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6)? If the information is solely within the possession of the defendant and the inference is otherwise plausible, the answer is “yes,” according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In Ahern Rentals, Inc. v. EquipmentShare.com, Inc., the Eighth Circuit joined six other federal circuits that found this form of pleading to be sufficient. For more on the decision, check out Scott Lauck’s post on the case for Missouri Lawyers Media.
  • The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently rejected a motion by Amazon to dismiss a complaint accusing Amazon of improperly reverse engineering the artificial intelligence (AI) trade secrets of a vendor. In GateGuard, Inc. v. Amazon.com Inc., No. 21-cv-9321, 2023 WL 2051739 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 16, 2023), the vendor GateGuard alleged that Amazon was misappropriating GateGuard’s “proprietary security technology that acts as an ‘AI Doorman’ for multifamily residential properties, allowing authorized users to unlock entrances remotely and to monitor activity.” Judge John Koeltl’s sixty-three page opinion focused on, among other things, Gateguard’s terms of service agreement which specifically forbid reverse engineering. For more on the case, check out McGuire Wood’s Trade Secrets Tidbits post by Sarah Holub, Meghaan Madriz, Yasser Madriz and Miles Indest.
  • Staying on the topic of Rule 12(b)(6) motions, during the course of my review of these cases each month, I am seeing a trend by federal courts denying these motions on the trade secret claims but sometimes dismissing other tort claims. This trend is supported by the decisions above, as well as other decisions this past month by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Aristotle Int’l, Inc. v. Acuant, Inc. (a case involving data scraping), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Hardwire, LLC v. Freyssinet Int’l Et Cie, et al. (dismissing Sherman Act claims), and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Sunjoy Indus. Group, Ltd., v. Permasteel, Inc. (dismissing trade dress claims).
  • Looking for ideas for your motion in limine to exclude improper evidence at your next trade secret trial? Then look no further than HP Tuners, LLC v. Cannata, where the U.S. District Court of Nevada ruled on a host of different requests to exclude evidence, including requests under Daubert and other expert challenges, Rule 408 settlement discussions and evidence of the parties’ respective wealth.
  • Never underestimate the power of an accelerated development timetable to create an inference of misappropriation when seeking an injunction. In Palltronics, Inc. v. Paliot Solutions, Inc., Judge Page Hood of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan was persuaded by the fact that the former employees’ brand-new company “managed to accomplish in one year, what it took Lightning [the former employer] over five years and $25 million in research and development to achieve” and she ruled “[i]t can be inferred that such dramatic progress was possible because Defendant relied on Lightning’s former employees’ knowledge of the trade secrets, processes and other information they gained from working at Lightning to set up its business.”

Continue Reading Monthly Wrap Up (March 12, 2023): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Cases, Developments and Posts

On Saturday, February 18, 2023, I will be speaking at the American Bar Association’s Corporate Counsel CLE Seminar in Orlando on “Tips from the Trenches: Hot Issues and Best Practices in Trying a Trade Secrets Claim under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA)” with Nicole Galli of ND Galli Law LLC, Benesch’s

2022 was a momentous year in trade secret and restrictive covenant law. Join BenRussell and me as we take a look back on some of the more significant developments in trade secret and restrictive covenant law from the past year and what we are expecting in the coming year. We discuss recent criminal

Part I of this post explored the increasing number of trade secret cases being presented to juries for damages, rather than to a judge for an injunction. This development appears to have accelerated in the past 6 months, as juries awarded $2 billion in a verdict for Appian Corp., a $65 million verdict against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, and a $105 million verdict against Ford Motor Company. Part II (below) describes the many forces that I believe are contributing to this shift, as well as the impact this development will have on trade secret owners, small companies, large companies and lawyers whose practices focus on trade secret cases.Continue Reading The Changing Shape of Trade Secret Trials: An Increasing Shift to Juries and What that Means for Trade Secret Owners and their Lawyers (Part II)

There is a subtle but important shift that is taking place in the way that many trade secret cases are being litigated and going to trial.  In the not-too-distant past, the vast majority of trade secret owners focused primarily on getting an injunction–generally in the form of a TRO or preliminary injunction–against a former employee.  However, some trade secret owners are increasingly pursuing a different path–namely, a claim for damages–usually against a large partner, vendor, customer or competitor with substantially deeper pockets.  Because these claims for damages are generally determined by a jury, unlike an injunction which is decided by a judge, this development presents a potentially seismic shift in how some trade secret cases are litigated.  As I explain below, several of these cases have resulted in substantial verdicts in recent months and they more closely resemble the path taken in many patent damages cases.  This post analyzes this development, offers some theories on why these changes are now taking place, and provides some thoughts on what clients and lawyers long accustomed to seeking injunctions need to do to adapt to these changes.
Continue Reading The Changing Shape of Trade Secret Trials: An Increasing Shift to Juries and What that Means for Trade Secret Owners and their Lawyers (Part I)