In 2004, 19-year-old college sophomore Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University to create a company that would change the world. Theranos, Inc. was going to revolutionize medicine with its proprietary blood testing devices that could detect high cholesterol, cancer, and other medical conditions with a single finger pinprick. In 2014, the company’s valuation peaked at over $9 billion, making Holmes the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world with a net worth of about $4.5 billion. Four years later, in June 2018, Holmes was indicted on eleven counts of fraud. On January 3, 2022, Holmes was convicted on one count of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud. She faces a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison, and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution, for each count.

Hulu’s new limited series, The Dropout, chronicles the rise and fall of Theranos through the lens of its CEO, played by Amanda Seyfried. Episode 7, Heroes, touches on Holmes’s well-documented preoccupation with trade secrets. During its first decade, Theranos operated in stealth mode – no media communications, no public disclosures, and no product releases.
Continue Reading The Dropout: Trade Secrets in Pop Culture

In addition to conventional warfare, it was recently confirmed by an arm of the Ukraine Ministry of Defense that it hacked trade secrets from a Russian state nuclear utility, and then leaked the trade secrets to a public website to harm the utility’s commercial prospects. Such “hack and leak” operations have been done before by nation-affiliated hackers to attempt to influence political activities of other nations, but this may be the first operation of this type concerning technical trade secrets during warfare. Although the economic impact from this particular operation may be difficult to gauge at this time, this hack and leak of nation state-affiliated company trade secrets may be a sign of things to come in future armed conflicts.
Continue Reading A New Battlefront: Ukraine Resistance Includes Leaks of Russian Trade Secrets

First off, don’t worry, Coca-Cola’s super-secret trade secret recipe is still safe.  But on April 22, 2021, a jury in the Eastern District of Tennessee convicted a former Coca-Cola employee, Dr. Xiaorong (a/k/a Shannon) You, of stealing trade secrets related to BPA-free coatings for the inside of beverage cans for the Chinese Government. The Indictment alleged that the trade secret information cost almost $120 million to develop. The twelve-day in-person trial focused not just on the former employee’s wrong doing, but also on some the best practices Coca-Cola and Eastman Chemical Company used to protect the trade secrets at issue.
Continue Reading Former Coca-Cola Employee Convicted of Stealing Trade Secrets for the Chinese Government

The U.S. Justice Department indicted a man for allegedly conspiring to steal proprietary data from General Electric (“GE”) and produce and sell it in China.
Continue Reading DOJ Indicts Hong Kong Citizen in Attempted Trade Secrets Scheme

On February 10, the U.S. International Trade Commission (“ITC”) issued a final determination finding South Korean lithium-ion electric vehicle battery maker SK Innovation misappropriated the trade secrets of its Korean competitor LG Chem in violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930.  The ITC issued a 10-year exclusion order blocking SK’s imports into the U.S. of lithium-ion batteries and related products, but with substantial exceptions: SK is permitted to continue importing these products specifically for Ford Motor Co.’s EV F-150 program for four years, for Volkswagen of America’s modular electric drive line for two years, and for the repair and replacement of EV batteries for Kia vehicles sold to U.S. customers.  President Biden and his U.S. Trade Representative—Katherine Tai has been nominated but not yet confirmed—now have 60 days to review the ITC’s electric vehicle battery exclusion order, an order that could be seen as in tension with the new administration’s promotion of green energy.
Continue Reading ITC Finds Trade Secret Misappropriation and Bars Electric Vehicle Batteries from SK Innovation—With Exceptions

Given the value of trade secrets in the global economy, businesses should always be on high alert for signs of misappropriation of trade secrets or other confidential information. COVID-19 has only increased the importance of doing so given employee mobility and a growing remote work force, which not surprisingly has spurred litigation by businesses attempting to protect trade secrets.

One recent example, CourtAlert.com (“CourtAlert”), a company offering case monitoring software for the legal industry, brought suit against a former employee and its competitor American LegalNet, Inc. (“ALN”) alleging trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment among other claims.  See CourtAlert.com, Inc. v. American LegalNet, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-07739 (S.D.N.Y.).
Continue Reading Trade Secret Battle Waged in Legal Services Market

Recent United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) indictments of Chinese hackers provide a reminder that trade secrets and other intellectual property stored on databases are attractive targets to bad actors. The DOJ announced that seven international defendants were charged in connection with computer intrusion campaigns impacting more than 100 victims in the United States and abroad.

The victims of the cyberattacks included software development companies, computer hardware manufacturers, telecommunications providers, social media companies, video game companies, non-profit organizations, universities, think tanks, and foreign governments. The hacking facilitated the theft of source code, software code signing certificates, customer account data, and other valuable business information. These cyberattacks also enabled the defendants’ other criminal schemes, including ransomware attacks and “crypto-jacking” schemes, which involve the unauthorized use of victim computers to “mine” cryptocurrency.Continue Reading DOJ Indictment of Chinese Hackers for Break-Ins at 100 Companies Reinforces The Importance of Protecting Trade Secrets and Implementing Security Protections

On May 22, the Eleventh Circuit clarified trade secrets misappropriation analysis under the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“FUTSA”), strengthening the trade secret protection offered by the statute. The decision vacated a magistrate judge’s finding that the defendants had not misappropriated trade secretes following a bench trial in the Compulife Software Inc. v. Newman et al. matter (No. 18-12004). The court found error in the magistrate’s failure to “consider the several alternative varieties of misappropriation” contemplated by FUTSA and the magistrate’s reasoning that the public availability of life insurance quotes on the plaintiff’s website “automatically precluded a finding that scraping those quotes constituted misappropriation.”

“At its essence, it’s a case about high-tech corporate espionage,” Circuit Judge Kevin C. Newsom’s opinion begins. The plaintiff, Compulife Software Inc. (“Compulife”), sells access to its online database of insurance premium information, which synthesizes publicly available insurers’ rate tables using Compulife’s proprietary method and formula. Compulife also provides life insurance quotes sourced from its online database. The database itself is valuable because it consistently updates with current information about life insurers’ rate tables and allows for direct comparison across dozens of providers. Compulife licenses access to the database to its customers—primarily insurance agents who in turn seek to provide reliable insurance rate estimates to policyholders. In direct competition with Compulife, the defendants likewise generate life insurance quotes through their various websites.Continue Reading Eleventh Circuit Solidifies Protection of Trade Secrets Threatened By “High-Tech Corporate Espionage” Under Florida’s Trade Secret Law

The COVID-19 crisis has presented an array of novel issues for companies, including new and unexpected cybersecurity threats. In addition to the now well-known security limitations of video platforms such as Zoom, we are seeing cyber-attacks in the form of COVID-19 related phishing attempts and ransomware attacks. In at least some of these attempted hacks, cybercriminals are hoping to steal trade secrets.

  • Cybercriminals are taking advantage of the novel at-home working environment and the increased fear and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic to launch malware and phishing attacks related to COVID-19.
  • Employees may be more likely to click a link or open an attachment, even though they would never consider doing so in a normal situation at work.
  • Therefore, malware may pose more of a danger than it did when employees primarily accessed their email over their employers’ traditionally more protected systems.
  • Companies should consider putting employees on notice about the COVID-19 related phishing attempts and provide examples of common scams.

Continue Reading COVID-19 and the Unique Opportunity for Phishing

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.
Continue Reading Complex Threat Investigations: Tips for Investigating Trade Secret Misappropriation and Other Digital Crimes