On May 23, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania dismissed a trade secret misappropriation claim for failure to identify a trade secret. The case is titled Vertical Bridge REIT, LLC v. Everest Infrastructure Partners, Inc., Case No. 23-1017 (W.D. Pa. 2024).
Allegations. PlaintiffVertical Bridge (“VB”) and its related entities own…
The rise in trade secrets litigation in the electric vehicle (“EV”) sector continues with Tesla filing another lawsuit: this time against its own equipment supplier. On June 14, 2024, Tesla filed a complaint in the Northern District of California against Matthews International Corp. for trade secret misappropriation, along with breach of contract and unfair business…
On January 26, 2023, Cigna Corp. (“Cigna”) sued CVS Health Corp. (“CVS”) and its newly hired chief product officer Amy Bricker (“Bricker”), in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, for allegedly violating her non-compete agreement with Cigna. The complaint was filed three (3) weeks after the US Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”)…
Electric car sales in 2023 were 3.5 million higher than in 2022, a 35% increase in one year. The rise in demand for electric vehicles (“EVs”) has prompted many companies to enter the EV battery space. Given the rapid development of, and technological advances required to, create new EVs, innovators in this space are increasingly…
The life sciences sector is in its “golden era” of innovation with the convergence of disciplines—including genetics, immunology, cell biology, and artificial intelligence—changing the speed, efficiency, and cost at which innovation occurs.
With this era has come a fierce market for talent, resulting in the frequent movement of professionals between life sciences companies. Employee mobility…
On May 1, 2024, in Design Gaps, Inc. v. Hall, 23CV040664-590, North Carolina’s business court dismissed an interior design company’s trade secret claim for failure to sufficiently plead the existence of trade secrets. The business court found that the “vague and conclusory” list of trade secrets that plaintiffs pled was not precise enough to…
AQuate II, LLC v. Jessica Tedrick Myers and Kituwah Global Gov’t Group, LLC, is, as all parties put it, about “an archetypical trade secrets claim,” but with a couple of twists: sovereign immunity and an agreement to resolve disputes in a forum that allegedly does not exist. See Aquate II LLC v. Myers, et al.,…
A recent complaint alleging trade secret misappropriation in the Eastern District of New York demonstrates the importance of combing an alleged trade secret misappropriator’s social media for subtle – and not-so-subtle – evidence of their wrongdoing.
The United States has charged Klaus Pflugbeil and Yilong Shao with conspiring to convey a trade secret without authorization…
Taking legal action to protect a trade secret is unlike other intellectual property litigation since what you’re trying to protect is a secret. Plaintiffs must navigate a fine line between pleading their complaint with enough specificity to put the Defendant on notice of what they allegedly misappropriated, but not too much to diminish the value…
On November 9, 2023, in Ho-Ho-Kus, Inc. v. Sucharski, No. 2:23-cv-01677, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey found that Ho-Ho-Kus, Inc. (“HHK”) failed to show a trade secret existed with adequate specificity to justify granting a TRO or a preliminary injunction, but nevertheless denied a motion to dismiss arguing…
