A fundamental question in every trade secret misappropriation case is: what are the alleged trade secrets that are the subject of the claim?  To assist parties and courts in answering this question, the Sedona Conference recently published Commentary on the Proper Identification of Asserted Trade Secrets in Misappropriation Cases (“Commentary”) which is available for download here. The Commentary provides four guiding principles for identifying different types of asserted trade secrets: the identification of an…

Why litigate a case for months or years, only to arrive at a settlement that would have been possible before the case began?  In many cases, neither litigant would choose this approach, but it happens quite often nonetheless.  According to Lex Machina data, about 60% of trade secret cases filed in federal court in the last decade ended in either a voluntary (8%) or stipulated (52%) dismissal.  Of course, many of these settlements were likely…

Under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act (CUTSA), and many other states’ trade secret acts, a plaintiff must identify its alleged trade secrets as a prerequisite to conducting discovery.  Cal. Civ. Code § 2019.210.  The Ninth Circuit recently held that the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) also includes this requirement to identify alleged trade secrets with sufficient particularity.  The Ninth Circuit was considering whether the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California had abused its…

The U.S. government is continuing its endeavor of prosecuting individuals for the theft of U.S. trade secrets and for allegedly selling or bringing these trade secrets to China. The U.S. government is demonstrating that it considers the protection of trade secrets, particularly those used in national defense and other essential technology, to be a priority. On October 1, 2020, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts reported that Haoyang Yu, a U.S. citizen…

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…

On October 2, 2020, a federal judge for the Central District of California denied a motion for a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) to enjoin the Discovery Channel from airing “The Lost Lincoln,” a documentary about an allegedly long-lost photograph of Abraham Lincoln on his deathbed.  Only 130 photographs of Lincoln are known to exist. Plaintiffs Jerry Spolar and Terry Williamson own the photograph, known as an ambrotype, and spent years researching and authenticating it.  In…

On September 14, 2020, China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China, released the “Opinions on Increasing Enforcement Against Intellectual Property Infringement According to Law” (关于依法加大知识产权侵权行为惩治力度的意见) (“Opinions”). The Opinions cover four main areas: (1) Evidence Preservation, (2) Injunctions, (3) Monetary Relief, and (4) Criminal Enforcement Evidence Preservation Articles 1-4 cover evidence preservation.  Evidence preservation is a measure taken by Chinese courts to investigate, collect, and preserve evidence when it may…