Preservation of electronically stored evidence (ESI) may be critical in trade secret cases. When a dispute revolves around whether a defendant accessed and/or transmitted the plaintiff’s trade secret material maintained in an electronic file, the file’s metadata can have evidentiary importance. Similarly, the defendant may have an interest in the plaintiff’s own disclosures of the alleged trade secret because such disclosures may negate its status as a trade secret (e.g., by showing the plaintiff did…