You may have read about Xiaolang Zhang recently. He’s the Apple engineer who was about to board a plane to China before being arrested by FBI agents and charged with theft of trade secrets under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1832. His new employer, Xpeng Motors, denied any knowledge of trade secret theft.

Rather than recount the details reported by the press, this week on Five Minute Law we’re traveling into the future to hear opening statements in the civil lawsuit to be filed in federal court under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.

SCENE: Courtroom, Robert F. Peckham Federal Building & United States Courthouse, San Jose, California, USA.

THE COURT: Ok, we’re on the record on July 14, 2020, in Case No. 18-CV-78745, Apple, Inc. v. Xpeng Motors. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are now going to hear opening statements from the lawyers. Ms. Cunningham, are you ready to proceed?

MS. CUNNINGHAM: Yes, Your Honor.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a case about cheating. Not cheating at sports or cheating on your spouse, but cheating at business. Specifically, the business of self-driving car technology. You all know my client, Apple. It’s the best-known technology company in the world. It got there through hard work and innovation.

But some companies want to take shortcuts. Rather than doing the hard work to develop their own technology, they want to cheat and ride the coattails of others. The evidence will show that the defendant, Xpeng Motors, is one of those companies.

Xpeng was founded in 2014 in Guangzhou, China to develop electric self-driving vehicles. It is backed by some of the biggest Chinese companies in the world. It has a lot of smart people working for it, but in 2016 Xpeng decided that wasn’t enough. They needed a boost.

Now you all know about the iPhone and the MacBook, but that’s not all that Apple does. Apple also has a division working round the clock to develop software and hardware for autonomous vehicles. That means self-driving cars.

Back in 2016, Apple had made general statements to the press about self-driving car technology, but the details were a closely guarded secret. The code name was Project Golden Delicious.

This project involved thousands of engineers. One of those engineers was Mr. Xiaolang Zhang. Apple hired Mr. Zhang in December 2015 as a hardware engineer on the Compute Team, where he designed and tested circuit boards to analyze sensor data for the project.

Apple is very serious about making sure people like Mr. Zhang don’t publicize Apple’s secret technology and future product plans. The evidence will show that Apple takes extensive efforts to protect its trade secrets.

Before starting, corporate employees must sign an Intellectual Property Agreement that prohibits any unauthorized use or transmission of Apple’s intellectual property. Apple provides employees annual training on the importance of protecting its confidential information. Mr. Zhang signed one of these agreements and attended the annual training, so he was fully aware of his obligations to protect Apple’s intellectual property.

Apple was especially serious about protecting the secret technology it was developing in Project Golden Delicious.

Apple had several layers of access control for project information. First, Mr. Zhang had to log in to the company’s virtual private network, which they call the “VPN.” Next, another employee had to grant him disclosure rights for the project.

Then, Apple used an internal software tool to manage requests for project disclosure and maintain a record of all disclosures. For Mr. Zhang to get access to the project, another employee had to “sponsor” him and give a business justification. A manager had to review and approve that request. So, access was strictly on a “need to know” basis.

After granting Mr. Zhang general access to the project, Apple then gave him even higher access to the secret project database. He worked on the project for about a year and a half, learning about Apple’s secret autonomous vehicle technology the whole time.

This was a huge privilege for Mr. Zhang. Just imagine having the keys to the vault where you could find top-secret technology for the most cutting-edge industry in the world.

But what did Mr. Zhang do with this privilege? The evidence will show that he betrayed Apple. And he did not act alone.

Sometime prior to April 2018, Mr. Zhang got in touch with Xpeng Motors. We don’t know exactly when or where, because Mr. Zhang pled the Fifth.

MR. CROCKETT: Objection! Your Honor, may we approach? [bench conference ensues with animated body language]

MS. CUNNINGHAM: As I was saying, we know Mr. Zhang got in touch with Xpeng Motors at some time before April 2018. You see, Mr. Zhang took advantage of Apple’s generous paternity leave policy from April 1 to April 28, 2018. While on paternity leave, he traveled to China. Funny thing is, that’s where Xpeng Motors has its headquarters.

Then on April 30, 2018, shortly after returning from China, Mr. Zhang suddenly announced—these announcements are always “sudden”—that he was moving back to China to be with his mother who was in poor health. Oh, and one more thing. He told his immediate supervisor at Apple he was going to work for Xpeng Motors.

You can imagine the alarm bells this set off at Apple. Mr. Zhang’s supervisor called in Apple’s New Product Security Division, who met with Mr. Zhang and took custody of his two iPhones and his MacBook laptop. Apple then immediately disabled his access to Apple’s network and offices.

Apple did a forensic analysis of Mr. Zhang’s devices, and guess what they found? Just days before Mr. Zhang announced he was leaving, his Apple network activity increased exponentially. It included both bulk searches of the secret project database and targeted downloading of specific files.

These files included technical documents on Apple prototypes and prototype requirements, such as power requirements, low voltage requirements, battery system, and drivetrain suspension mounts. You will hear Apple’s expert witness testify that these secret technical documents would have great independent economic value for a competitor in the self-driving car field.

But that’s not all. You will see security camera video showing Mr. Zhang on Apple’s campus at 9:14 p.m. on the evening of Saturday, April 28, 2018. You’ll see him enter Apple’s autonomous vehicle software and hardware labs and leave the building less than an hour later carrying a computer keyboard, some cables, and a large box.

Was he just working late, burning the midnight oil? Keep in mind he was on paternity leave at this time, and he announced his resignation just two days later. The evidence will make it pretty obvious what he was doing.

But don’t take my word for it. You will hear testimony that Mr. Zhang was interviewed both by Apple security and the FBI. And he admitted it. He admitted pursuing employment with Xpeng Motors while still employed by Apple. After initially denying it, he admitted he was on the Apple campus on April 28. He admitted taking online data from the secret project database while on paternity leave.

It gets worse. Mr. Zhang admitted “air-dropping” the data he took from Apple’s system on to his wife’s laptop computer. When Apple examined that computer, it found that a folder titled “RECENT” contained 40 Gigabytes worth of data, and the laptop’s system event logs reflected “Air Drop” activity on April 29 and 30. And 60 percent of the data on the computer came from Apple.

One of the files Mr. Zhang put on his wife’s laptop was especially important. We call it the “X-File.” The X-File contained top-secret electrical schematics for one of the circuit boards Apple was developing for the project.

Now, why do you think Mr. Zhang was doing all this? Was he going to use all this secret technology by himself? That doesn’t make any sense.

The evidence will show that immediately after leaving Apple, Mr. Zhang went to work for Xpeng Motors at its headquarters in Palo Alto. Then on July 7, he bought a last-minute round-trip ticket to China. And he might have gotten away with it too, if FBI agents hadn’t arrested him just after he got through the security checkpoint at Terminal B.

After you hear all the evidence, the inescapable conclusion will be that Mr. Zhang was working with Xpeng Motors to take Apple’s secret technology.

And that’s cheating. Thank you.

THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Crockett, are you ready to proceed? . . . Mr. Crockett?

MR. CROCKETT: Oh, sorry. Yes, Your Honor.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m impressed. That was quite an opening by Ms. Cunningham. I don’t know if I can compete with that. I mean, I didn’t go to Harvard like she did. I’m just an old trial lawyer.

But I tell you what. These old hearing aids still work pretty good, and I was using them while Ms. Cunningham was talkin’. And it’s not what I heard that’s important, it’s what I didn’t hear.

Let me give y’all an example. I didn’t hear her say anything about having any evidence that Xpeng Motors was in cahoots with Mr. Zhang when he did all that sneaky stuff during his paternity leave. Did you hear her say anything about any evidence that anybody at Xpeng Motors put Mr. Zhang up to it? I didn’t.

You know what else I didn’t hear? I didn’t hear anything about any evidence that Mr. Zhang ever—ever—gave any of those top-secret Apple documents to anyone at Xpeng Motors.

Now, when we get to the end of this trial, you’re going to get some papers from the judge that we call a charge. And that charge is going to have a lot of complicated instructions about stuff like “misappropriation.”

Now, back when I was flying helicopters in Vietnam, we didn’t use a lot of fancy words like “misappropriation,” but I know what stealing is. And that’s basically what misappropriation means: stealing. And I’ll make you a bet. I bet during this whole trial you won’t hear any evidence that my client, Xpeng Motors, stole anything from Apple.

You know what else you’re not going to hear? I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you won’t hear any evidence that Apple lost any money because of anything Xpeng Motors did. Now they’ve got this man with a Ph.D who’s going to come in and say there’s no way Xpeng could have developed its self-driving car technology without Apple’s schematics. So when they don’t have any real evidence, they’re going to rely on some professor getting paid $750 an hour. Well, we have a saying back in Texas where I grew up: that dog won’t hunt.

Now, I’ll level with you on something. You’re going to see some internal emails from Xpeng Motors talking about how they’re going to make their self-driving car technology more like Apple’s and beat Apple at its own game. But that’s not stealing, that’s competition. That’s the American way. If you can build a better mouse trap, you get the cheese.

Or the apple. [wink]

THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Crockett. Ms. Cunningham, call your first witness.

_________________________________________________________________

Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC.  

He made up the names “Project Golden Delicious” and “X-File,” and the stuff about what Xpeng Motors did. The rest of the facts are taken from press reports and the FBI agent affidavit attached to the Criminal Complaint in U.S. v. Xiaolang Zhang, No. CR-18-70919, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

 

You can’t take him anywhere: Five Minute Law goes to a cocktail party

Hi, I’m Zach Wolfe.

Good to meet you Zach, I’m Travis Austin. So what do you do?

I’m a lawyer. I do business litigation.

Oh, my cousin’s a lawyer. I think he does corporate law. What kind of litigation do you do?

Mostly non-compete and trade secrets cases.

Trade secrets? That sounds interesting. Like patents?

Not really. [Wolfe pauses to think about whether he can explain without sounding pedantic.] Actually, a patent is kind of the opposite of a trade secret.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, like if you file a patent on some new technology you invented, the patent filing makes it public to the world. 

Ok, I see. So if you keep the technology inside the company, it can be a trade secret?

Exactly.

So is that the kind of trade secret litigation you do?

Well, not that much. [Wolfe pauses again to decide whether to explain or change the subject to something less boring.] Most of my trade secret cases involve things like customer lists and prices.

Really? I didn’t think prices were trade secrets.

[Wolfe smiles, sensing an opportunity] They can be. I actually just wrote a blog post about that.

Oh, you have a blog? . . . [now all is lost]

A typical price undercutting scenario

So what’s the answer? Are prices really trade secrets?

It depends. Let’s consider a hypothetical.

Paula Payne Windows orders windows from manufacturers and sells them to residential and commercial builders. The profit is the spread between the cost of buying and shipping the windows and the price charged to the customer.

Dawn Davis is the most experienced sales person at Paula Payne Windows. One day Dawn meets the owner of Real Cheap Windows for margaritas. A month later, Dawn suddenly announces to Paula Payne—these announcements are always “sudden”—that she’s leaving the company to go to work for Real Cheap.

And here’s the hard part for Paula Payne: Dawn never signed any non-compete. In fact, she never even signed a routine confidentiality agreement. “When Dawn started, our whole company was just a little office with three phones and some computers,” the founder of Paula Payne Windows explains. “The last thing I was thinking about was legal documents.”

A few weeks later, it becomes obvious that Dawn’s customers have stopped placing orders with Paula Payne. And that’s not all. Paula Payne discovers that the day before leaving, Dawn emailed herself an Excel spreadsheet containing all of her sales for the previous 90 days, including (1) the name of the customer contact, (2) the window model numbers, (3) the price paid to the manufacturer, (4) the shipping cost, and (5) the price charged to the customer.

Paula Payne Windows sues Dawn Davis and Real Cheap, claiming misappropriation of Paula Payne’s trade secrets under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and the state Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

Specifically, Paula Payne claims that after joining Real Cheap, Dawn started selling to her previous customers at prices slightly lower than what customers were paying Paula Payne. “Dawn Davis is using the confidential pricing information in the spreadsheet to undercut Plaintiff and steal its customers,” Paula Payne alleges.

This is the common “price undercutting” theory in trade secrets litigation. It is common because while not every company has secret technology or a “secret sauce,” every business has customers and prices.

So, even if a company doesn’t require its employees to sign non-competes, the company can use trade secret law to try to stop a departing employee from competing, as long as it has customers and prices that are arguably confidential.

When are prices trade secrets?

Returning to the initial question, is that kind of information actually a trade secret?

Like any kind of information, prices charged to customers can be trade secrets, if:

(1) the price information has “independent economic value”

(2) the prices are not “readily ascertainable” by competitors

(3) the company took “reasonable measures” to keep the prices secret

These are the three essential elements of a “trade secret” under both the Texas and federal statutes. Like any type of information, price information that meets these elements can be a trade secret.[1]

But prices are not just any kind of information. Price competition is at the core of the free competition the law should encourage. We want businesses to “undercut” their competitors on price. We just don’t want them to use another company’s trade secrets to do it.

So it’s important for judges to hold companies to their burden of proving their price information meets the three elements needed for trade secret protection.

Let’s apply this to the Paula Payne Windows case. Paula Payne would argue that the detailed price information in the spreadsheet has “independent economic value” because Dawn can use it to undercut Paula Payne.

But Paula Payne Windows also has to prove the price information is “not readily ascertainable.” In this case, the spreadsheet contains prices charged to Paula Payne and prices charge by Paula Payne. Is it really that hard for a competitor to find out those prices?

To show the information is not a trade secret, Dawn’s lawyer will want to establish that:

– Paula Payne Windows has no agreements with the window manufacturers requiring the manufacturer prices to be kept confidential

– Prices charged by the manufacturers are available in industry publications, on the Internet, or simply by asking the manufacturer

– Paula Payne Windows has no agreements with its own customers requiring its prices to be kept confidential

– Paula Payne’s customers are willing to tell other window companies how much Paula Payne is charging them

These questions go to the heart of the elements of a trade secret. If Paula Payne doesn’t require its customers to sign confidentiality agreements, has it really taken “reasonable measures” to keep the prices secret? If manufacturers and customers are willing to disclose their prices, isn’t the information “readily ascertainable”?

Companies always want to say their prices are highly confidential and valuable, but that claim often doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

And that’s not the only problem with the price undercutting theory.

Causation rears its ugly head

Let’s say Paula Payne Windows persuades a judge or a jury that the pricing information is a trade secret. That’s not the end of the story. Paula Payne also needs to prove that Dawn Davis used the information to make the sales to the customers. In other words, Paula Payne still has to prove causation.

Ah, causation. The bane of plaintiff’s lawyers everywhere.

You see, it’s not enough to prove the price information was a trade secret and that Dawn Davis sold windows to Paula Payne’s customers. Paula Payne must prove it was Davis’s use of the information—and not something else—that caused Paula Payne to lose the sales.

This requires a counterfactual: imagine that Dawn Davis never took the spreadsheet with the prices. Would she have still made the sales?

To prove Dawn would have made the sales anyway, her lawyer will want to show:

– Dawn has longstanding personal relationships with her customers

– Dawn could have undercut Paula Payne Windows simply by asking the customers what Paula Payne Windows was charging them

– Price is not the only factor for the customers, or even the most important factor

– The customers ordered from Dawn because of their personal relationships

– Prices change daily or weekly, making the numbers in the spreadsheet quickly obsolete

– Dawn didn’t even look at the spreadsheet in making the sales

– In short, Dawn would have made the sales even if she hadn’t taken the spreadsheet.

Proving these points could negate the causation element of Paula Payne’s trade secrets claim.

Wait a minute, you might say. This isn’t fair. Dawn Davis developed goodwill with her customers on Paula Payne’s dime. That goodwill belongs to Paula Payne. Dawn shouldn’t be allowed to exploit it for the benefit of a competitor.

You would have a point. But goodwill is not a trade secret. And there is really only one legal mechanism to protect goodwill: an enforceable non-compete.

But if there isn’t a non-compete, and the employee takes confidential information about the company’s prices, how do you sort out whether the employee made the sales because she had the price information, or because she had relationships with the customers?

Ask me next time you see me at a party.

___________________________________________________________________

Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC.

These are his opinions, not the opinions of his firm or clients, so don’t cite part of this post against him in an actual case. Every case is different, so don’t rely on this post as legal advice for your case.

[1] See Fox v. Tropical Warehouses, Inc., 121 S.W.3d 853, 859 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2003, no pet.) (a pre-TUTSA case citing price lists and customer lists as information entitled to trade secret protection until trial); T-N-T Motorsports, Inc. v. Hennessey Motorsports, Inc., 965 S.W.2d 18, 24 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1998, pet dism’d) (same). See also SP Midtown, Ltd. v. Urban Storage, L.P., No. 14-07-00717-CV, 2008 WL 1991747, at *6 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] May 8, 2008, pet. denied) (mem. op.) (evidence that customer and price information would allow competitors to slightly undercut plaintiff’s prices and take its business raised a fact issue on whether the information was a trade secret); In re Desa Heating, L.L.C., No. 2-06-088-CV, 2006 WL 1713489, at *2 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth June 22, 2006, orig. proceeding) (mem. op.) (affidavit testimony that competitors could use financial information to undercut company’s pricing to obtain its customers, while “somewhat conclusory and lacking in detail,” was sufficient to establish that information was entitled to trade secret protection in discovery).

Prologue: Look Away

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, then you would be better off somewhere else. My name is Zach Wolfe, and it is my solemn duty to bring you the sordid tale of the Flaubert orphans, three children who inherited the old Real Cheap Windows factory when their parents died in a mysterious mansion fire.

As minors, the children had to rely on Mr. Edgar, the company’s lawyer, to guide them. “I have bad news for you,” Mr. Edgar said in his first meeting with the children. “Just before your parents perished, Real Cheap Windows hired Dawn Davis, the star salesperson for our most ruthless competitor, Paula Payne Windows.”

“Did Dawn have a non-compete?” young Rose Flaubert asked. “Oh, it’s worse than that,” Mr. Edgar replied as he coughed into his handkerchief. “Much, much worse.”

“You see, before leaving Paula Payne Windows, Dawn downloaded ­7,500 confidential company documents to a portable hard drive,” Mr. Edgar said. “Paula Payne has now sued us,” he explained, “claiming those files contained its most closely guarded trade secrets.”

“A trade secret,” he continued, “is information that derives independent economic value from not being known or . . .”

“We know what a trade secret is,” Karl Flaubert interrupted. “But I’ve spent hours reading an award-winning legal blog by a very handsome young lawyer,” Karl said, “and it says that companies often claim that things like ordinary lists of customers are trade secrets, even when that information is readily ascertainable.”

Karl continued. “If we think the trade secrets claim is contrived, can’t we just make Paula Payne Windows specifically identify what the alleged trade secrets are?” he asked. “Otherwise, we’re just flying blind.”

Here, “flying blind” is an expression that means engaging in some action with little or no knowledge of the facts of the situation, such that you are likely to crash or collide with a metaphorical obstacle because you lack knowledge of certain crucial information.

Karl was right. If you had to defend a trade secrets claim without knowing specifically what the alleged trade secrets are, you would be flying blind. But I am sorry to say the rest of this story is rife with misfortune and despair. You should probably stop reading now.

Chapter One: The Pleadings

That night, Rose and Karl read the pleadings. Paula Payne Windows had filed a Complaint in federal court claiming that Dawn Davis violated the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act by transferring the files to the portable hard drive.

But the Complaint was quite vague about what the alleged trade secrets were: “confidential company information, including without limitation customer lists, vendor information, prices, information about business plans, and methods of doing business.”

Here, “vague” is a word used to refer to allegations that are “fuzzy,” or not sufficiently definite. Vague should not be confused with “ambiguous,” which means a statement that can be reasonably interpreted to have two or more distinctly different meanings.

Karl also reviewed the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which provide that a defendant can file a “Motion for More Definite Statement” when the plaintiff’s pleading is “so vague or ambiguous that the party cannot reasonably prepare a response.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(e). “That’s it,” Rose said, “we’ll tell Mr. Edgar to file a motion for more definite statement.”

But Mr. Edgar laughed when the children came to him with the idea. “Flauberts, nobody really files a motion for more definite statement,” he said. “Now, children, if we were in state court we could file ‘special exceptions,’ which are kind of the same thing, and still popular with some older lawyers.”

“But even then,” Mr. Edgar said after another fit of coughing, “the judge would probably just say ‘serve some interrogatories instead—that’s what discovery is for.'”

Sweety Flaubert, the youngest of the children, responded with baby talk that was incomprehensible to Mr. Edgar. But her siblings understood: “Shouldn’t a litigant be required to state sufficiently specific allegations to give the opposing party fair notice, before the powerful engine of discovery is invoked?”

Interrogatories are written questions that can be served in the discovery process in civil litigation. The party receiving the interrogatories must serve signed answers within 30 days, but the responding party also has the right to make objections. I can assure you that the Flaubert children were about to discover just how frustrating the responding party’s interrogatory answers can be.

Chapter Two: Interrogatories

At the urging of the Flaubert children, Mr. Edgar sent an interrogatory to the lawyer for Paula Payne Windows, asking him to “identify each alleged trade secret with reasonable particularity.” After 30 days, Paula Payne Windows responded by objecting and saying: “Subject to the objections, see the 7,500 files Dawn Davis downloaded to a portable hard drive on or about September 1, 2017.”

“Those documents are 170,000 pages long,” Rose fumed. Tying her hair back, she banged out a “Motion to Compel” on an old typewriter she found. She then presented the Motion to Compel to Mr. Edgar.

“Flauberts, I’m sorry,” Mr. Edgar said, “but we can’t just haul off and file a Motion to Compel.” He explained that under Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, first he would have to “confer” with opposing counsel about the Motion. “So confer,” Karl said. “But it’s not that simple,” Mr. Edgar responded, “and I don’t like confrontation.”

Mr. Edgar went on to explain that there were also Local Rules and “Standing Orders” designed to discourage motions to compel. “The judge’s standing order says the lead lawyers must confer in person, [cough] so first we have to confer about the location of the conference.”

I know what you’re thinking. “Confer about where to confer? What a sorry state of affairs.” But I can assure you I have seen this very thing happen. Literally.

Sixty days later, Mr. Edgar filed the Motion to Compel, which the judge denied at a hearing five months later. “There must be something we can do to make them tell us what the trade secrets are,” Rose protested. “I mean, they’re the ones trying to get our fortune by claiming our company stole trade secrets.”

Chapter Three: Mandamus

“Well, there is one thing,” Mr. Edgar said, his voice trailing off. “But it will never work,” he said. “We could try filing a petition for writ of mandamus in the Court of Appeals.”

“Mandamus” is a Latin word that means “throw a Hail Mary.” The term “Hail Mary” refers to a prayer traditionally recited in the Roman Catholic church, or a football play where the quarterback throws the ball as hard as he can into the end zone in a last-second effort to win the game. The phrase now figuratively refers to any last-ditch strategy for victory that has a low chance of success.

“We understand the risk,” Karl said, “but we’re willing to try it.” Karl spent that night in the library researching case law on identification of trade secrets. “Rose, I think I’ve found something!” “It’s a Petition for Mandamus to the Texas Supreme Court in a similar case called In re Terra Energy Partners, LLC.”

The Terra Energy petition was a goldmine of helpful case law. Here, “goldmine” is used figuratively. A literal goldmine is an underground cavern where underpaid workers dig up a precious metal used in wedding bands. A figurative goldmine is a source of abundant helpful information.

“It turns out that many federal district courts across the nation have required plaintiffs to disclose the alleged trade secrets with specificity even before discovery starts,” Karl told Rose. He rattled off several examples cited in the Terra Energy Petition:

• United Serv. Auto. Ass’n v. Mitek Sys., Inc., 289 F.R.D. 244, 248 (W.D. Tex. 2013)
• StoneEagle Servs., Inc. v. Valentine, No. 12-1687, 2013 WL 9554563, at *5 (N.D. Tex. June 5, 2013)
• Big Vision Private, Ltd. v. E.I. duPont de Nemours & Co., 1 F. Supp. 3d 224, 258-59 (S.D.N.Y. 2014)
• Zenimax Media, Inc. v. Oculus Vr, Inc., No. 3:14-CV-1849-P (BF), 2015 WL 11120582, at *3 (N.D. Tex. Feb. 13, 2015)

“If we can just cite these cases, the judge will have to order Paula Payne Windows to identify the trade secrets,” Karl said.

If this were an ordinary children’s story with a happy ending, I would report to you that Karl provided these cases to Mr. Edgar, who triumphantly cited them to the judge and obtained an order requiring specific identification of the trade secrets. But this story has no happy ending. You may want to avert your eyes as the rest of the tale unfolds.

The Flaubert children soon learned that the Petition for Writ of Mandamus in the Terra Energy case was denied, not once, but twice. First by the Houston Court of Appeals, second by the Texas Supreme Court.

“You see, Flauberts,” Mr. Edgar explained, “the very reasoning of the cases you found shows why mandamus won’t work.” “These cases reason that the trial court judge has broad discretion to order the plaintiff to identify the alleged trade secrets,” he said. “But obtaining a writ of mandamus requires showing the judge abused her discretion. It’s not enough to say the judge made the wrong decision.”

Chapter Four: The Corporate Rep Deposition

Now Rose was really angry. “Can’t we turn this around on Paula Payne Windows?” she asked. “If they’re going to claim that there are 170,000 pages of trade secrets, haven’t they opened the door to extensive discovery on all of those pages?” “You’re right,” Karl said. “And while I was researching mandamus, I saw something about Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6).”

“Yes, we call that a ‘corporate rep’ deposition,” Mr. Edgar said. He reluctantly agreed to serve a Rule 30(b)(6) notice of deposition requiring a representative of Paula Payne Windows to testify regarding all 170,000 pages of documents containing the alleged trade secrets.

A “corporate rep” deposition is a common discovery procedure used when one of the parties is a business such as a corporation or LLC. The party taking the deposition identifies the topics, and the responding company must prepare a representative to testify. The procedure is designed to prevent a company from hiding the ball about relevant information and who knows it. Here, “hiding the ball” is an expression that means . . . well, you get the idea.

Paula Payne Windows designated Mr. Sir as its representative. Through my investigation I have obtained this portion of the deposition transcript:

“A lot of good that deposition did us for $37,000 in legal fees,” Rose said later. “I guess we’ll never find out what the trade secrets are. We’re doomed to be surprised at trial.”

Chapter Five: Motion for Summary Judgment

Sweety Flaubert then gurgled something Mr. Edgar could not understand, but Rose and Karl could: “Just force the issue by filing a motion for summary judgment on the ground that there is no evidence that the information is a trade secret.”

A motion for summary judgment asks the judge to rule on an issue as a matter of law. In this context, it would say that the trade secrets claim should be dismissed because there is no evidence that the information is actually a trade secret, and therefore no factual dispute for the jury to decide. In Texas state court procedure, the technical term for this kind of motion is a “no evidence” motion.

The Flaubert children asked Mr. Edgar about filing a motion for summary judgment to force the issue. “In theory, that could work,” he said. “Sometimes a no evidence motion for summary judgment is useful to force the opposing party to put his cards on the table.”

“Put his cards on the table” is an expression that . . . Ok, I know. You’re getting sick of this.

“The problem with that kind of motion,” Mr. Edgar continued, “is that you’re not supposed to file it until the plaintiff has had an adequate time for discovery.” “If we file it now, Paula Payne Windows will just say it needs more time for discovery.”

The Flauberts were crestfallen. “Litigation really is a conundrum of esoterica,” Karl said.

___________________________________________________________________

Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC. He really doesn’t watch that much TV.

These are his opinions, not the opinions of his firm or clients, so don’t cite part of this post against him in an actual case. Every case is different, so don’t rely on this post as legal advice for your case.

 

I was listening to Huey Lewis in my garage recently and started singing to myself, I Want a New Goal.

See, I often write about issues of trade secrets law that come up in new cases or that I find interesting, but I got to thinking that people who don’t regularly deal with trade secrets litigation might just want to know the basics. So, I made an ambitious goal for myself: write a memo that talks, right down to earth, in language everyone can easily understand, about the basics of trade secrets law.

Easy, right? But here’s the catch: it has to be 5,000 words or less.[1]

After accomplishing this goal, I wondered if anyone would really care about my memo. But then the drumbeat started. I kept seeing tweets about “Release the Memo,” and then even the President weighed in.

After careful consideration, I have decided to de-classify and release my memo: “Trade Secrets 101” – Texas Trade Secrets Law in 5,000 Words or Less.

Please let me know what you think of it. Did I leave out something important? If so, what would you delete to make room for what I left out? Is it too technical for non-lawyers? Too superficial for practicing lawyers? I want to know.

And here is a little background to the memo, to give you some context.

Is trade secrets law hard to understand? 

Let’s back up and look at trade secrets law in general. Is it hard to understand?

Not especially. The good news is that trade secrets law is fairly intuitive, at least compared to other areas of intellectual property law.

For example, take the question “can a plaintiff claim trade secret protection for information that it did not keep secret?” If a company publicizes information, you wouldn’t think it can claim the information is a trade secret. On the other hand, you wouldn’t think the mere fact that confidential information escaped from the company would be sufficient to destroy the information’s trade secret status.

Your intuitions on this issue would be correct. The company is required to show that it took “reasonable measures”—not perfect measures—to maintain the confidentiality of the alleged trade secrets. That’s just common sense.

The “bad” news—at least for business people who want certainty—is that trade secrets issues tend to be fact-intensive, making it difficult to give categorical answers to client questions.

Where do the statutes define “hard” and “soft” trade secrets?

They don’t.  This is terminology I made up (although I’m sure I wasn’t the first) to help make sense of a basic factual distinction in trade secret cases.

“Hard” trade secrets are the kinds of things you traditionally think of as trade secrets.  The paradigm of hard trade secrets is the “secret sauce,” e.g. the formula for Coke, the Colonel’s secret herbs and spices, the recipe for the creamy jalapeño dip at Chuy’s, etc.

Secret technology is another obvious type of hard trade secret.  If you come up with a new secret technology that allows you to drill an oil well sideways, for example, that’s obviously a trade secret. If competitors can’t readily figure out your technology, it gives you a competitive advantage.

Secret business plans—when truly valuable to know—are the third thing I think of as a “hard” trade secret.  Let’s say you’re buying up land in the middle of nowhere in Florida because you’re secretly planning to build a massive theme park.  That would obviously be an extremely valuable thing for a real estate speculator to know.

“Soft” trade secrets, on the other hand, are the kind of confidential information that almost every business has: things like customer lists, vendor lists, pricing information, and financial information about the company.

I don’t mean to suggest that soft trade secrets aren’t really trade secrets.  If the information meets the statutory definition (discussed in the memo), it’s a trade secret, regardless of whether it is hard or soft.

But from both a practitioner’s and a public policy perspective, we should be a little more skeptical about soft trade secrets.  The company is almost always going to claim that its customer lists and prices are trade secrets.  Whether you’re the plaintiff’s lawyer, the defense lawyer, or the judge, you should always ask “why?”

More than a feeling, that’s the Power of Law.

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Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC.

These are his opinions, not the opinions of his firm or clients, so don’t cite part of this post against him in an actual case. Every case is different, so don’t rely on this post as legal advice for your case.

[1] I realize that “5,000 words or fewer” might be more grammatically correct, but it just doesn’t have the right ring to it.