Cases from New York

A New York state appellate division court affirmed the lower court’s ruling that rejected a motion to dismiss trade secrets misappropriation and unfair competition claims where such claims raised triable issues of fact about the alleged trade secrets.

Plaintiff Zylon Corp. is a company that focuses on developing new technologies relating to medical materials, medical devices, and catheters. Defendant Medtronic, Inc. is a medical device designer and manufacturer. In 2005, the parties entered into an Evaluation Agreement whereby Zylon Corp. would create a “zero-fold” balloon to be used in angioplasty catheters for Medtronic. As part of the Agreement, all information and processes developed through the course of the project were to be confidential and the property of Medtronic.

In 2008, Zylon brought suit against Medtronic, alleging that after disclosing the Zylon design and manufacturing process of creating the “zero-fold” balloon to Medtronic as a part of their confidential relationship, Medtronic misappropriated trade secrets and confidential information related to the process to create a balloon component for a different product, the Sprinter® Legend Semicompliant Rapid Exchange Balloon Catheter. Zylon argued that the information provided to Medtronic included Zylon trade secrets, outside of the Agreement’s confidential information.

The appellate division court affirmed the decision because Zylon raised triable issues of fact about the trade secret process for creating “zero-fold” balloons and whether a protectable trade secret existed. Medtronic failed to demonstrate that the information it used to create its own catheters was the same confidential information pursuant to the Agreement. As such, the court affirmed the lower court, rejecting Medtronic’s bid to dismiss Zylons claims.

Securities brokerage firm Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. has filed suit against former financial consultant Douglas Castro, employed in the brokerage’s Garden City, New York office from until December 2011, when he allegedly abruptly left Schwab and immediately began work at ADC Wealth management, Castro’s newly formed wealth management firm. Schwab’s complaint alleges that Castro was responsible form managing a portfolio worth neatly $275 million, and possessed voluminous information about his former clients and access to extensive amounts of client account information, assets and tax information, as well as investment objectives and other client financial records. The Schwab brokerage complaint includes allegations of Castro’s breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of duty of loyalty, and unfair competition. According to Schwab, Castor utilized Schwab trade secret customer information without authorization, and therein misappropriated said information by soliciting Schwab clients for his newly formed competing firm ADC Wealth Management (ADC).

Not surprisingly, Castro executed confidentiality, non-solicitation and assignment agreements that barred him from using Schwab customer information to divert Schwab business to a new company or solicit Schwab clients to transition their accounts outside the brokerage. In the terms of his agreement with Schwab, Castro agreed not to solicit Schwab customers upon the termination of his employment, to protect the confidentiality of customer information, and not to use or disclose Schwab's confidential information for any purpose aside from performing his duties and responsibilities on behalf of Schwab” (Complaint, 5). According to Schwab, Castro violated the terms of this agreement after he quit and subsequently contacted Schwab clients with accounts he managed, in attempts to have these individuals transfer their accounts to Castro’s new firm. The case against Castro presents a familiar factual import where a former employee is alleged to have violated previous contractual and statutory obligations not to utilize investor-client information for financial or personal gain. Here, Schwab asserts that Castro could not have possibly learned of the identities of the individual he solicited for ADC’s business services without the information Castro obtained through Schwab.

However, somewhat unique to the case at bar is that both the identities of the Schwab customers themselves, in addition to their respective financial portfolio and wealth management information are seemingly claimed as Schwab trade secrets in this matter. While simply customer names themselves are likely not considered trade secret information, generally customer lists developed by a business through substantial effort and kept in confidence may be treated as a trade secret and protected at the owner's instance against disclosure to a competitor, provided the information it contains is not otherwise readily ascertainable. See North Atlantic Instruments v. Haber, 188 F.3d 38 (2d Cir. 1999). Determination of whether the Schwab customer information is trade secret will include a consideration of the cost, energy, and time taken by Schwab to cultivate their customer information, a question of fact rather than law. Importantly, the complaint goes to great lengths to outline the steps taken by Schwab to maintain the secrecy of their client information, an essential element for client-lists to be considered trade secrets under common law and count III of the complaint at bar. No answer has been filed by Fisher and Phillips LLP, the New Jersey firm representing Douglas Castro.

Alleging a stand-alone claim under the inevitable disclosure doctrine, plaintiff sued a former a sales associate and sought permanent injunctive relief barring the former employee from disclosing any of plaintiff's trade secrets or confidential information, and from working for its competitor. There were no allegations that the former employee breached a non-disclosure agreement, disclosed or misappropriated any trade secrets, or was subject to a non-compete agreement. The court granted defendant's motion to dismiss and declined to expand New York's application of the inevitable disclosure doctrine under this set of facts and outside of the preliminary injunction context.

On July 13, 2012, the US District Court for the Western District of New York gave notice to the parties in Document Security Systems, Inc. (DSS) v. Coupons.com rescheduling the motions hearing set for October 9th, 2012 . Motions will now be heard on August 16th regarding DSS’s October 24, 2011 claims against Coupons.com for breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and unjust enrichment. Specifically, DSS is a cloud-computing data integration company specializing in anti-counterfeiting, authentication, and mass-serialization technologies. The lawsuit alleges that Coupons.com misappropriated DSS’s proprietary digital copy protection technology, using said technology in their coupons without authorization. The business relationship between DSS and Coupons.com was centered around DSS’s secret “Blockout” technology that when placed onto an image, will render a print-out of the image unable to be copied or scanned by high-end electronic devices (Complaint ¶ 2). Coupons.com representatives signed non-disclosure agreements and were shown three kinds of DSS security technology including the proprietary Blockout software, for the purposes of “evaluating a potential business relationship (Complaint ¶ 24; quoting 2005 NDA ¶ 3). DSS alleges in its complaint that Coupons.com used the proprietary Blockout software in their digital coupons without paying for or being granted rights to commercial use of their proprietary product in any contract or otherwise.
In response, Coupons.com’s motion to dismiss filed early December 2011 argues that DSS’s trade secrets misappropriation and unfair competition claims must be dismissed as duplicative of the breach of contract for violation of the non-disclosure agreement. Furthermore, Coupons.com does not specifically deny violation of its NDA with DSS or use of the DSS Blockout software in its coupons, but instead asserts that the other claims must be thrown out under New York law. Citing Clark-Fitzpatrick, Inc. v. Long Island Railroad Co., Coupons challenges DSS’s tort claims arising from an alleged breach of contract, because DSS did not plead an independent legal duty extraneous to the contract. In other words, Coupons.com defends that without any further contractual obligation, they are liable only for damages arising under violation of the existing non-disclosure agreement.
Undoubtedly the Western District Court expedited the hearing schedule on this matter lay in anticipation of Coupons.com pending method patent (granted on July 17th) for a “System and Method of Augmenting Content in Electronic Documents with Links to Contextually Relevant Information. ” Such a patent will allow for the digitization of Coupons.com on handheld electronic devices for use by consumers, essentially eliminating the need the printable coupons and their electronic protections (like the DSS Blockout software). However, Coupons.com recent announcement of its new merchant self-service “Brandcaster Retail” coupon e-platform may imply Coupons.com continuing need for digital copy protection technology like the DSS Blockout software . Thus while early settlement was at one time possible, October 2012 mediation sessions failed to amicably settle the relevant and substantive legal issue of whether Coupons.com’s sole breach of their non-disclosure agreement with DSS (by way of unauthorized commercial use the Blockout software) bars subsequent trade secret misappropriation claims under the same cause of action. As such, the case is currently in pre-trial discovery posture as both parties adhere to the discovery schedule outlined by Hon. Marian W. Payson on December 12, 2012.