Trade Secret Report

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal,California,Delaware
• Citation: Vol. 46 No. 4
• Publication year: 2021
• Author: Conor Tucker

TRADE SECRET REPORT

Conor Tucker
Irell & Manella LLP

DTSA—PLEADING TRADE SECRETS SUFFICIENTLY

Whiteslate LLP v. Dahlin, 20-cv-1782 W (BGS) (S.D. Cal. July 7, 2021).

After transactional associate accepts in-house job at law firm client, law firm sues client and former associate alleging, in part, violations of the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Firm alleged that transactional attorney provided various documents, templates, and other work product owned by it to client (with whom transactional attorney was interviewing for in-house position). Firm sues in part on DTSA and California UTSA (CUTSA). Court held on motion to dismiss that "catchall phrases" or "categorical information" such as "contracts, document templates, and other work-product, as well as [plaintiff's] client list and database," is not sufficient to plead existence of a trade secret under either the DTSA or CUTSA (which the court notes are "substantially similar, and many courts analyze the claims together.")

You Map, Inc. v. Snap, Inc., et al. 20-162-CFC (D. Del. July 27, 2021).

Plaintiff hired testers for its interactive map feature under terms and conditions designed to maintain the confidentiality of its program (such as confidentiality, non-use, and nondisclosure provisions). Plaintiff's competitor had its employees sign up as testers (two under false names and others using a private e-mail address not announcing their association with competitor). This gave competitor access to source-code metadata and object code, library files, machine code, and software algorithms.

Plaintiff alleges violations of the DTSA and the Delaware UTSA, which the court addresses together. After initially dismissing case for failure to "identi[y ] trade secrets with enough particularity to provide notice to Defendants about what they are accused of misappropriating," the court holds that the first amended complaint fixes those problems. The court allows the claims "to move forward even if...certain aspects were publicly known at the time the misappropriation is alleged to have occurred" where "underlying software algorithms and source code were [not] publicly known." The Court further finds that the complaint sufficiently alleges misappropriation, even though there were only two days alleged between download and modifications to competitors system and "beta testing does not typically make underlying code available to beta testers." Finally, the Court holds that allegations that...