Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute, the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), can apply to a variety of commercial litigation claims, including claims for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).  If the TCPA is invoked in a case and is found to apply, the plaintiff must respond with clear and specific evidence of the prima facie elements of its causes of action.  Recently, the Texas Supreme Court addressed what evidence would satisfy…

A plaintiff who believes its trade secrets have been misappropriated can pursue those claims in either federal or state court. One of the advantages of choosing federal court is the growing body of case law holding that the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA), Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute, does not apply in federal court.…

One of the most common defenses to a misappropriation of trade secrets case under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA) is to file a motion to dismiss under Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). The defendants in Mancilla v. Taxfree Shopping, Ltd, No. 05-18-00136-CV, 2018 WL 6850951 (Tex. App.—Dallas Nov. 16, 2018, no pet.) employed the TCPA to defend against plaintiff’s TUTSA claim. Unfortunately, though, the defendants…

As previously mentioned in this blog, one of the biggest issues in trade secrets litigation in Texas is the application of the state’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) to claims under the Texas Uniform Trade Secret Act (TUTSA). Because of the broad language of the TCPA, defendants can file a TCPA motion to dismiss in almost any trade secrets case. On June 2, 2019, Governor Abbott…

If you have been following Texas cases on the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA), you know that a plaintiff that files a TUTSA claims will almost inevitably receive in response a motion to dismiss under Texas’s anti-SLAAP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA). This is what happened in Gaskamp v. WSP USA, Inc., No. 01-18-00079-CV, 2018 WL 6695810 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] Dec. 20, 2018, no pet. h.),…

If you have been reading this blog, you know that I have frequently commented on the use of Texas’s anti-SLAPP statute the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA) to defeat a Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA) claim. Most of the early cases involved defendants using the TCPA to dismiss a plaintiff’s TUTSA claim. Universal Plant Services, Inc. v. Dresser-Rand Group, Inc., No. 01-17-00555-CV, 2018 WL 6695813 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] Dec.…

The Texas Uniform Trade Secret (TUTSA) allows a defendant to recover its attorneys’ fees if (1) the claim for misappropriation was brought in bad faith or (2) a motion to terminate an injunction is made or resisted in bad faith. The recent Dallas Court of Appeals case of Performance Pulsation Control, Inc. v. Sigma Drilling Technologies, No. 05-17-01423, 2018 WL 6599180 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2018, no pet. h.) is one of the few cases that has…