Welcome to WilmerHale’s bulletin on recent trade secret case law and relevant news items. We’ve affectionately nicknamed it “Readily Ascertainable” because, unlike a trade secret, it should be easy to figure out. If you have any questions about these cases or the legal questions they implicate, our trade secret team would be delighted to answer them.
This month’s cases address the sufficiency of trade secret identifications, the application of contractual liability limitation provisions to trade secret claims, a sweeping permanent injunction ruling, and a decision granting expedited discovery on a federal trade secret claim without requiring the plaintiff to identify its alleged trade secrets in advance.
Double Eagle Alloys, Inc. v. Hooper, 10th Cir. 2025 WL 1162473, __ F.4th __ (10th Cir. 2025)
Tenth Circuit grants summary judgment due to lack of adequate trade secret identification
The Tenth Circuit affirmed a grant of summary judgment for defendants—an alloy manufacturer and its new employee—holding that the alleged trade secrets were not defined with sufficient particularity. Defendant Michael Hooper allegedly took handwritten notes and 2,660 digital files containing product specifications, pricing, and customer drawings that he had downloaded from his work computer to a portable hard drive before he left plaintiff Double Eagle for defendant Ace Alloys. The Tenth Circuit held that Double Eagle failed to specifically identify what aspect of its product specifications were supposedly trade secrets, considering that very similar product specifications were used by its competitors, and it posted aspects of its specifications online. “[M]inor differences” between Double Eagle’s specifications and public disclosures did not qualify Double Eagle’s specifications as trade secrets, particularly where the vague trade secret identification had “left [the court] to hunt through thousands of pages to determine which portions of the specifications might qualify as trade secrets.” Id. at 7. Likewise, a declaration that Double Eagle’s pricing model was a proprietary formula using several inputs did not establish that a list of prices—which Double Eagle’s customers had no obligation to maintain in confidence—constituted a trade secret. Double Eagle’s failure to provide any evidence about the pricing model’s operation, its competitive value, or the time and expense that went into its development doomed its qualification for trade secret status. The court also held that the customer drawings were not Double Eagle's trade secrets—notwithstanding some evidence that Double Eagle treated them confidentially—because there was no evidence that Double Eagle owned the drawings.
Insulet Corp. v. EOFlow Co., Ltd., 2025 WL 1196055, __ F. Supp. 3d ___, (D. Mass. Apr. 24, 2025)
District court awards worldwide, permanent injunction for willful and malicious misappropriation but reduces unjust enrichment and exemplary damages
Following a month-long trial in November 2024, a jury awarded Insulet $452 million—composed of a $170 million unjust enrichment award and $282 in exemplary damages. After trial, the plaintiffs moved for a permanent injunction, seeking to prohibit defendants from using, possessing, selling, or otherwise distributing its trade secrets.
The court first concluded that the proposed worldwide scope of the injunction was appropriate because it was “tailored to the specific harm” identified in the suit. Id. at *2-3. The court also made the injunction permanent because there was no evidence EOFlow could have reverse engineered Insulet’s insulin pump and developed a competing device so quickly. Id. at *3. As to the $170 million unjust enrichment award, however, the court held that it “overlap[ped] to a significant degree with the requested injunction,” which was “designed to prevent future harm.” Id. To avoid such “duplicative recovery,” the district court required Insulet to make an “election of remedies.” Id. at *5. Insulet chose to reduce its monetary recover in exchange for keeping the injunction, ultimately obtaining “a permanent injunction together with the avoided-cost and exemplary damages that are not duplicative of the injunction.” Id. (quotation marks omitted).
Alabama Aircraft Industries, Inc. v. Boeing Co., 2025 WL 1009087, __ F.4th __ (11th Cir. Apr. 4, 2025)
Eleventh Circuit construes contractual limitation on liability to cover trade secret damages
This action involves a single claim under the Missouri Trade Secrets Act and arises from a contractual relationship between plaintiff Pemco Aircraft Engineering Services Inc. and defendant Boeing to service a fleet of U.S. Air Force aircraft. The Boeing-Pemco relationship ultimately fell apart, and Pemco sued for breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit held that the contractual limitation on liability “bars almost every category of monetary recovery that Pemco is seeking … but not all.” Id. at *2. Specifically, the contract’s limitation of liability provision referred to a party’s “fail[ure] to perform its obligations under this Agreement,” which included the non-disclosure agreement that gave rise to the underlying duty of confidence. Id. at *3. Contrary to plaintiff’s position that this language was a bar solely on breach of contract claims, the court held that the provision’s language prohibiting “punitive or exemplary damages” justified reading the limitation broadly to apply to a trade secret claim, because “punitive or exemplary damages … are available for tort claims … but are not available for breach of contract claims.” Id. The court thus concluded that the limitation provision barred Pemco from obtaining exemplary or punitive damages or any additional actual damages, which would represent a double recovery of damages recovered on contract claims that were previously tried.
Manufacturing Repair & Overstock Inc. v. Kasinger, 2025 WL 1208690 (E.D. Tenn. Apr. 25, 2025)
District court demonstrates the importance of adequately identifying alleged trade secrets at the case’s outset
A Tennessee-based robotics company sued its former Arkansas-based employees, who had left to form an Arkansas-based competitor. The plaintiff alleged trade secrets that “include but are not limited to, its customer lists, vendor lists, pricing structure for the products sold and services [it] offered…, and sales strategies tailored to customer needs and buying habits and patterns.” Id. at *13. But the district court granted a motion to dismiss, holding that this list “fails to provide any detail,” and does nothing “more than list generic categories of trade secrets… while neglecting to elaborate on what those alleged trade secrets are, let alone support[] them with factual allegations ‘relating to the criteria used to define trade secrets under” federal and Tennessee trade secret law. Id. (quoting Allergan, Inc. v. Revance Therapeutics, Inc., 711 F. Supp. 3d 873, 879 n.5 (M.D. Tenn. 2024)).
Praecipio Consulting LLC v. Howser, 2025 WL 1084766 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 10, 2025)
District court grants expedited discovery without a trade secret disclosure
The parties partially stipulated to a TRO arising from alleged misappropriation by the plaintiff company’s former employee just before he departed for a competitor. Notably, the court granted expedited discovery on the plaintiff’s DTSA claim over the defendant’s objection that the plaintiff had not disclosed its alleged trade secret with reasonable particularity. The court held that because the plaintiff did not bring a CUTSA claim, section 2019.210 of the California Code of Civil Practice did not apply. The court further reasoned that DTSA has no express requirement that a plaintiff disclose its trade secrets before being able to obtain discovery. While the court acknowledged that it had discretion to order a disclosure before granting discovery, it reasoned that requiring the plaintiff to make a trade secret disclosure before obtaining expedited discovery would unduly delay the plaintiff’s ability to obtain preliminary relief. The expedited discovery included a neutral forensic examination of the defendant’s devices, interrogatories, and depositions.
