Trade Secrets

As regular readers of this blog will know, our cross-disciplinary Trade Secrets team has been closely monitoring the development of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA).

The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) civil seizure mechanism provides victims of trade secret theft with a tool to immediately freeze dissemination of stolen proprietary information. Using civil seizure, a court may direct federal marshals to seize property necessary to prevent the promulgation of stolen trade secrets.

As 2017 begins and IP strategies are being developed for the new year, it is a good time to reflect on what IP issues were prominent in 2016. According to the many readers of Global IP Matters, hot topics included navigating the waters of patent prosecution, subject matter eligibility under § 101, and the Defend Trade Secrets Act.

Trade secret theft is a growing threat to American businesses. One obstacle to addressing misappropriation through a lawsuit can be a lack of direct evidence of theft.

An important question for any plaintiff alleging trade secret misappropriation is: “How much detail should I provide about the stolen trade secrets in the complaint?” Answering this question often requires the balancing of two important considerations.

Three attorneys from Mintz Levin’s IP and Employment practices are featured writers in the American Bar Association’s Business Law Today publication, explaining the ins-and-outs of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA).

American corporations are facing an ever increasing threat of misappropriation of their valuable trade secrets through industrial espionage, defined as the theft of a company’s trade secrets by an actor intending to convert the trade secret to the economic benefit of a competitor.

On July 5, 2016, in United States v. Nosal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals clarified the definition of “trade secret,” finding that data derived from a compilation of publicly available information can constitute a protectable trade secret in a case involving allegations under the Economic Espionage Act (EEA).

In some of the first decisions under the newly enacted Defend Trade Secrets Act, on June 10 and 22, 2016, United States District Judge Jon S. Tigar granted a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in Henry Schein, Inc. v. Cook, No. 16-cv-03166-JST (N.D. Cal. June 10, 2016) that prevents a sales consultant from accessing, using or sharing confidential data that she allegedly stole from her former employer before leaving the company in violation of trade secret laws and employment agreements.

“You sued them. They stay, period.” This is the conclusion a Texas trial court came to when asked to exclude the designated representative of a party from a hearing where an employee of the other party, a direct competitor, would disclose his employer’s trade secrets.

On Wednesday, President Obama signed into law the groundbreaking Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA)1, which for the first time creates a federal civil remedy for trade secret misappropriation and provides uniformity (and hopefully predictability) to what has, until this point, been a patchwork body of law applied disparately among the states.