On Monday, April 9, Facebook settled a trade secrets case brought against it in California federal court by BladeRoom Group Limited. BladeRoom, a data center construction company, alleged that Facebook had used and divulged its trade secrets, specifically its methodology regarding efficient construction and implementation of pre‑fabricated data centers. BladeRoom had first presented to the social network giant in confidential discussions in 2011. BladeRoom sought damages in excess of $300 million. After voluminous discovery and a week of trial,…

As first reported in a C&M Trade Secrets Blog Post last week, IBM filed a lawsuit in New York federal district court in early February against Microsoft’s newly hired diversity executive, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre. Ms. McIntyre had been at IBM more than 20 years, finishing her employment as its Chief Diversity Officer. She also signed a one-year non-compete and non-solicit agreement set to expire on January 29, 2019. When Ms. McIntyre left IBM to join Microsoft, IBM filed the lawsuit and sought…

Fera Pharmaceuticals LLC, Akorn Inc., and Perrigo Co. PLC have settled a $100 million trade secrets case three weeks before trial was set to begin in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  The case primarily involved trade secrets related to the production of erythromycin.  In its lawsuit filed in 2012, the plaintiff, Fera, alleged that defendant Akorn misappropriated trade secrets received from Fera under the guise of needing that information…

On January 18, 2018, a former software developer for IBM Corp. was sentenced to five years in prison after he had pleaded guilty of theft of a trade secret and economic espionage.  As part of his work for IBM, Xu Jiaquiang had access to proprietary source code which facilitates faster computer performance by coordinating work among multiple servers.  Despite IBM’s precautions in place to protect the secrecy of the code, including a firewall and express…

On October 10, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari challenging the Ninth Circuit’s holding that Power Ventures, Inc. had violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) by accessing Facebook user accounts. Power provided a platform whereby its members could access their various social media accounts in one place.  Power received authorization from Facebook users for this service after sending them messages through the social media platform.  Facebook responded by sending…

In the hotly contested case of Calendar Research LLC v. StubHub, Inc. et al., which is venued in the Central District of California, the plaintiff alleges misappropriation of trade secrets. Recently, the federal judge overseeing the litigation ruled that a source code expert, who had served very early in the litigation as a neutral evaluator for the parties to determine whether the defendant’s source code was based on Plaintiff’s misappropriated code, was disqualified from being used…