Blog : Trade Secret Litigation

“Sting! Der Stingelhopper. Makin’ copies! The McStingsterrrr.” Those of you above a certain age will remember this classic Saturday Night Live bit. It was silly and pointless, but funny and memorable. More about copy machines later. The Price Undercutting Theory As we start the year 2026, I’m wondering if the tide is turning against the “price undercutting” theory in trade secrets litigation. It’s a common theory that companies assert when an employee leaves and joins a competitor. The idea is that the former employee knows the company’s super-secret prices and shares them with his new employer, allowing the new employer […]

Like my man Cole Porter said, in olden days a glimpse of stocking, was looked on as something shocking, now Heaven knows . . . anything goes. Especially when a company sues a former employee who took documents containing the company’s alleged “trade secrets.” In a case like that, can the company get a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring the employee not to use the documents? Can the judge also make the employee immediately “return” the documents to the company? After handling cases like this for over a decade, I can tell you the practical answer is simple: in a […]

The McLaughlin Group There was a sketch on Saturday Night Live where Dana Carvey played news talk show host John McLaughlin. The recurring gag was that McLaughlin would ask the guests a serious political question, each would give a thoughtful answer, and McLaughlin would shout “WRONG!” I think about that a lot when I’m doing deposition preparation with clients in trade secrets lawsuits. Let’s go over some common ways defendants in trade secrets lawsuits go wrong in their depositions. We’ll use our old hypothetical friend Dawn Davis as an example 1. Are the things defined as “confidential information” or “trade […]

Court Holds the Weekley Homes Standard Applies The Houston Court of Appeals (14th) has held that the plaintiff in a trade secrets lawsuit is not automatically entitled to a forensic examination of a defendant’s device that was allegedly used to take the defendant’s alleged trade secrets. In re 4X Industrial, LLC, 683 S.W.3d 916 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2024) (orig. proceeding). Rather, to obtain an order for “direct access” to the defendant’s computer or electronic storage device, the plaintiff must satisfy the requirements established by the Texas Supreme Court in In re Weekley Homes, 295 S.W.3d 309 (Tex. 2009). Those […]

The Texas Supreme Court’s HouseCanary opinion addresses motions to seal in trade secrets cases.

Like the 2017 remix of Sgt. Pepper, redoing my classic paper on the essentials of Texas trade secrets law was a challenge.

If an employee acquires–but does not use or disclose–an employer’s trade secret, can the employer still sue for “misappropriation”?

Does misappropriation of trade secrets create a presumption of irreparable injury in Texas?

How do you submit “misappropriation” to the jury in a Texas trade secrets trial?

What does it take to adequately plead a claim for misappropriation of trade secrets? Or to get one dismissed?