Companies and other organizations increasingly must face serious and complex threats to their business and infrastructure. Whether the threat is trade secret theft, rogue insiders, cybercrime adversaries, aggressive competitors, or misconduct by business and supply chain partners, companies should remain constantly vigilant and defense ready. Adversaries, including especially cybercriminals operating exclusively in the digital domain, are often highly motivated, sophisticated, resourced, and innovative. The opaque, pervasive, and global nature of modern digital networked environments presents opportunities for criminals. The sophistication and relentless creativity of these bad actors pose significant challenges to companies and law enforcement agencies in being able to detect, assess, mitigate, attribute, and deter these threats. Because available tools and real-world practices to address these threats often outpace the law, companies are called upon to develop their own comprehensive approaches to investigate and remediate these forms of risk. In doing so, companies must be willing to assume a certain level of risk to effectively investigate and obtain sufficient insight to counter the problems.
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Hirer Beware: Your Employee’s Non-Compete Agreement with their Former Employer May Determine Where You Can be Haled to Court
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania recently ruled that a forum-selection clause in a former employee’s non-compete agreement may bind their new employer for purposes of establishing personal jurisdiction.
Matthews International Corporation (“Matthews”), a manufacturer of cremation furnaces, filed an action in the Western District of Pennsylvania against former employees and two competitors, Implant Recycling, LLC (“Implant”) and IR Environmental Solutions, Inc. (“IR Environmental”), alleging misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition. According to Matthews’s complaint, its former employees saved confidential company information and trade secrets on their personal USB drives and emailed company files to themselves before leaving Matthews to join Implant or IR Environmental. These former employees were subject to non-competition agreements that required them to submit to personal jurisdiction in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas or the Western District of Pennsylvania.
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CUTSA Does Not Preempt Contractual Interference Claim Based on Confidential (But Not Trade Secret) Information
The Southern District of California recently confirmed that the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“CUTSA”) does not preempt other civil claims to extent they are based on wrongful conduct relating to non-trade secret intellectual property.
The case involves an employee leaving a company and allegedly commercializing its trade secret with a competitor. Defendant Mr. Corey was an original co-founder of Plaintiff Javo – which sold coffee, tea, and botanical extracts. He played a key role in developing Javo’s proprietary process for making extracts. The process involved using a specially made extraction vessel and particular levels of water quality, temperature and pressure. In 2011, as a result of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, Javo terminated Mr. Corey’s employment. Importantly to this case, his employment agreement had included an assignment of all his rights and interests in any trade secrets to Javo.
Mr. Corey went on to work for the Defendant, California Extraction Ventures (“CEV”). Shortly thereafter, Mr. Corey filed patent applications disclosing some of Javo’s allegedly proprietary information, including purported trade secret information, as well as other confidential (but not trade secret) information. Rather than assign the patent applications to Javo, Mr. Corey assigned them to CEV, his new employer. Eventually seven patents issued, and seven additional applications were published.
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Dueling Claims: Trade Secret Theft or Antitrust Threat?
On November 5, 2019, Black Knight Inc. brought suit in Florida state court against PennyMac Loan Services LLC (“PennyMac”) alleging breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation under the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act. PennyMac allegedly used its access to Black Knight’s trade secrets and other confidential information relating to its proprietary mortgage servicing software
District of Colorado Awards “Exemplary Damages” Against Former Employee for Misappropriation of Bovine Serum Trade Secrets
On September 23rd, 2019, the District Court for the District of Colorado awarded Atlas Biologicals, Inc. a total of $2 million against Defendant Thomas Kutrubes and his company, Peak Serum, Inc. Kutrubes, a part owner and former employee of Atlas, was found liable for trademark infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of fiduciary duty.
Employee Wrongdoing Does Not Guarantee Favorable Trade Secrets Verdict
After a week-long trial in June, a jury in the Southern District of Texas awarded digital marketing firm Six Dimensions, Inc. (Dimensions) $287,000 for its breach of contract claim against its former employee, Lynn Brading. However, the jury rejected Dimensions’ $50 million lawsuit against its competitor, Perficient Inc. (Perficient) for stealing its trade secrets.
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Criminal Prosecution of Chinese Trade Secret Misappropriation
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois recently unsealed a December 13, 2017 indictment of Chinese national, Xudong “William” Yao, who was charged with nine counts of trade secret theft. The charges stem from Yao’s theft of more than 3,000 files between September 2014 and February 2015, including trade secret information such as source code and technical specifications, from an unnamed suburban Chicago locomotive manufacturer. The stolen documents generally pertain to the Illinois manufacturer’s train control systems. According to the indictment, Yao began downloading files just two weeks after beginning his employment with the Illinois company and continued to download files while simultaneously negotiating for and accepting a job with a Chinese “provider of automotive telematics service systems.” He began working for the Chinese company several months after being fired from the Illinois company for reasons unrelated to the theft of documents, and Yao’s employer did not discover the theft until sometime later.
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The ITC Institutes New 337 Investigation for Misappropriation of Trade Secrets Relating to Foodservice Equipment
A recent International Trade Commission (ITC) case shows that, although rarely used, the ITC remains a viable option for parties pursuing trade secret misappropriation claims. Trade secret claims can be brought under Section 337(a)(1)(A)’s catch-all for other “unfair methods of competition and unfair acts in the importation of articles”—often called “non-statutory” claims—and can result in
Are Agreements to Steal Trade Secrets an Antitrust Violation? Maybe, But Not Automatically.
What could be worse than a competitor misappropriating your trade secret? When a group of competitors conspire to misappropriate your trade secret! Especially in light of a recent decision from the Third Circuit, which held that agreeing to steal a trade secret is not automatically an antitrust violation, meaning it could be very expensive to
Huawei-CNEX Trial Starts Over Dueling Trade Secret Misappropriation Claims
Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s largest telecommunications company, and CNEX Labs Inc. went to trial this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over dueling allegations of trade secret theft relating to semiconductor chip technology behind solid-state drives. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. et al v. Huang et al, No.