Tag: Trade Secrets

Third Party Enforcement of A Non-Compete and Trade Secret Pre-emption – IL Law

untitled (photo credit: www.glogster.com)

In Cronimet Holdings v. Keywell Metals, LLC, 2014 WL 580414 (N.D.Ill. 2014), the Northern District of Illinois considers whether a non-compete contract is enforceable by a stranger to that contract as well as trade secret pre-emption of other claims.

Facts and Procedural History

Plaintiff, who previously signed a non-disclosure agreement with a defunct metal company (the “Target Company”) it was considering buying, filed a declaratory action against a competitor (“Competitor”) requesting a ruling that the non-disclosure agreement and separate non-competes signed by the Target Company’s employees were not enforceable by the competitor who bought  the Target Company’s assets. The NDA and non-competes spanned 24 months.

The plaintiff moved to dismiss eight of the ten counterclaims filed by the Competitor.  It argued the Competitor lacked standing to enforce the non-competes and that its trade secrets counterclaim (based on the Illinois Trade Secrets Act, 765 ILCS 1065/1 (“ITSA”)) pre-empted several of the tort counterclaims.

In gutting most (8 out of 10) of the counterclaims, the court applied the operative rules governing when non-competes can be enforced by third parties:

– Illinois would likely permit the assignment of a non-compete to a third party;

– Enforcing a non-compete presupposes a legitimate business interest to be protected;

– A legitimate business interest is a fact-based inquiry that focuses on whether there is (i) a “near-permanence” in a customer relationship, (ii) the company’s interest in a stable work force , (iii) whether a former employee acquired confidential information and (iv) whether a given non-compete has valid time and space restrictions;

– A successor corporation can enforce confidentiality agreements signed by a predecessor (acquired) corporation where the acquired corporation merges into the acquiring one;

– A successor in interest is one who follows an original owner in control of property and who retains the same rights as the original owner;

– The ITSA pre-empts (displaces) conflicting or redundant tort claims that are based on a defendant’s misappropriation of trade secrets;

– Claims for unjust enrichment, quasi-contract relief or unfair competition are displaced by the ITSA where the claims essentially allege a trade secrets violation;

– The ITSA supplants claims that involve information that doesn’t rise to the level of a trade secret (e.g. not known to others and kept under ‘lock-and-key’);

(**4-5).

The court found that since a bankruptcy court (in the Target Company’s bankruptcy) previously ruled that the Competitor didn’t purchase the non-competes, and wasn’t the Target Company’s successor, the Competitor lacked standing to enforce the non-competes.

The Court also held that once the Target Company stopped doing business, its non-competes automatically lapsed since it no longer had any secret data or customers to protect.

The Court also agreed that the Company’s ITSA claim pre-empted its claims that asserted plaintiff was wrongfully using the Target Company’s secret data.  The court even applied ITSA pre-emption to non-trade secret information.  It held that so long as the information sought to be protected in a claim was allegedly secret, any non-ITSA claims based on that information were pre-empted.

Afterwords:

(1) A non-compete can likely be assigned to a third party;

(2) Where the party assigning a non-compete goes out of business, the assignor no longer has a legitimate business interest to protect; making it hard for the assignee to enforce the non-compete;

(3) ITSA, the Illinois trade secrets statute, will displace (pre-empt) causes of action or equitable remedies (unjust enrichment, unfair competition, etc.) that are based on a defendant’s improper use of confidential information – even where that information  doesn’t rise to the level of a trade secret.

Illinois Court Examines Trade Secrets Act and Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine In Suit Over Employee Wellness Health Program

The plaintiff workplace wellness program developer sued under the Illinois Trade Secrets Act in Destiny Health, Inc. v. Cigna Corporation, 2015 IL App (1st) 142530, alleging a prospective business partner pilfered its confidential data.

Affirming summary judgment for the defendants, the First District appeals court asked and answered some prevalent trade secrets litigation questions.

The impetus for the suit was the plaintiff’s hoped-for joint venture with Cigna, a global health insurance firm.  After the parties signed a confidentiality agreement, they spent a day together planning their future business partnership.  The plaintiff provided some secret actuarial and marketing data to Cigna to entice the firm to partner with plaintiff.  Cigna ultimately declined plaintiff’s overtures and instead teamed up with IncentOne – one of plaintiff’s competitors.  The plaintiff sued and claimed that Cigna incorporated many of plaintiff’s program elements into Cigna’s current arrangement with IncentOne.  The trial court granted Cigna’s motion for summary judgment and plaintiff appealed.

Held: Affirmed.

Rules/Reasons:

On summary judgment, the “put up or shut up” moment in the lawsuit, the non-moving party must offer more than speculation or conjecture to beat the motion.  He must point to evidence in the record that support each element of the pled cause of action.  In deciding a summary judgment motion, the trial court does not decide a question of fact.  Instead, the court decides whether a question of fact exists for trial.  The court does not make credibility determinations or weigh the evidence in deciding a summary judgment motion.

The Illinois Trade Secrets Act (765 ILCS 1065/1 et seq.) provides dual remedies: injunctive relief and actual (as well as punitive) damages for misappropriation of trade secrets.  To make out a trade secrets violation, a plaintiff must show (1) existence of a trade secret, (2) misappropriation through improper acquisition, disclosure or use, and (3) damage to the trade secrets owner resulting from the misappropriation. (¶ 26)

To show misappropriation, the plaintiff must prove the defendant used the plaintiff’s trade secret.  This can be done by a plaintiff offering direct (e.g., “smoking gun” evidence) or circumstantial (indirect) evidence.  To establish a circumstantial trade secrets case, the plaintiff must show (1) the defendant had access to the trade secret, and (2) the trade secret and the defendant’s competing product share similar features.  (¶ 32)

Another avenue for trade secrets relief is where the plaintiff pursues his claim under the inevitable disclosure doctrine.  Under this theory, the plaintiff claims that because the defendant had such intimate access to plaintiff’s trade secrets, the defendant can’t help but (or “inevitably” will) rely on those trade secrets in its current position.  However, courts have made clear that the mere sharing of exploratory information or “preliminary negotiations” doesn’t go far enough to show inevitable disclosure.

Here, there was no direct or circumstantial evidence that defendant misappropriated plaintiff’s actuarial or financial data.  While the plaintiff proved that defendant had access to its wellness program components, there were simply too many conceptual and operational differences between the competing wellness programs to support a trade secrets violation.  These differences were too stark for the court to find misappropriation. (¶ 35)

Plaintiff also failed to prove misappropriation via inevitable disclosure.  The court held that “[a]bsent some evidence that Cigna [defendant] could not have developed its [own] program without the use of [Plaintiff’s] trade secrets,” defendant’s access to plaintiff’s data alone was not sufficient to demonstrate that defendant’s use of plaintiff’s trade secrets was inevitable.  (¶¶ 40-42).

Afterwords:

A viable trade secrets claim requires direct or indirect evidence of use, disclosure or wrongful acquisition of a plaintiff’s trade secrets;

Access to a trade secret alone isn’t enough to satisfy the inevitable disclosure rule.  It must be impossible for a defendant not to use plaintiff’s trade secrets in his competing position for inevitable disclosure to hold weight;

Preliminary negotiations between two businesses that involve an exchange of sensitive data likely won’t give rise to an inevitable disclosure trade secrets claim where the companies aren’t competitors and there’s no proof of misappropriation.  To hold otherwise would stifle businesses’ attempts to form economically beneficial partnerships.

 

No Disparagement Or Non-Compete Means No Injunction – IL Court

In Xylem Dewatering Solutions, Inc. v. Szablewski, 2014 IL App (5th) 140080-U,  the plaintiff corporation sued some of its ex-employees after they joined a competitor and started raiding plaintiff’s office staff.

The trial court denied plaintiff’s request for an injunction and then it appealed.

Result: Trial court’s order upheld. Plaintiff loses.

Reasons: To get a preliminary injunction, a plaintiff must establish (1) a clearly ascertained right in need of protection; (2) irreparable injury; (3) no adequate remedy at law; and (4) a likelihood of success on the merits.

The plaintiff must establish a “fair question” on each of the four elements. A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy that is only granted in extreme, emergency settings. (¶¶ 20-21).

Irreparable harm can result from commercial disparagement of a plaintiff’s product but the plaintiff must show the defendant repeatedly made false or misleading statements of fact regarding the plaintiff’s goods and services to establish irreparable harm.  Statements of opinion (“their services suck!”, e.g.) don’t qualify as commercial disparagement. 

Here, the Court found that there were no repeated factual statements made by the defendants.  In addition, all statements that were attributed to the defendants were purely interpretive: they weren’t factual enough to be actionable.  (¶¶ 23-24).

In finding that the plaintiff lacked a protectable interest in its employees or customers, the court pointed out that neither individual defendant signed a non-compete and didn’t violate any fiduciary duties to the employer.

In Illinois, absent a non-compete, an employee is free both to compete with a former employer and to outfit a competing business so long as he doesn’t do so before his employment terminates.  And while a corporate officer owes heightened fiduciary duties not to exploit his position for personal gain, the ex-employee defendants were not corporate officers. (¶ 26).

Plaintiff also failed to establish a protectable interest in its pricing and bid information.  The Illinois Trade Secrets Act, 765 ILCS 1065/1 et seq. (“ITSA”) extends trade secret protection to “information” that is (1) sufficiently secret to derive economic value, from not being generally known to others who can obtain economic value from its use, and (2) that is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain the information’s secrecy (i.e., “kept under lock and key”)

Information that is generally known in an industry – even if not to the public at large – isn’t a trade secret. Also, information that can be readily copied without a significant outlay of time, effort or expense is not a trade secret. 

The pricing data the plaintiff was trying to protect was several years old and the defendants testified that the bidding information was well known (and therefore not secret) in the pumping industry.  In combination, these factors weighed against a finding of trade secret protection for the pricing and bidding information. (¶¶ 29-31).

Afterwords:

(1) Stale data likely won’t qualify for trade secret status – no matter how arcane the information;

(2) If information is well known or can be easily accessed within an industry, it won’t be given trade secret protection;

(3) Noncompete agreements can serve vital purposes.  If a business fails to have its workers sign them, the business risks having no recourse if an ex-employee joins a competitor and later raids the former employer’s personnel.