Recent Decisions and Case Developments

On February 24, 2017, a federal jury handed down the first verdict under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). Dalmatia Import Group and Maia Magee (“Plaintiffs”) develop and sell various flavors of high quality fig jam. After their business relationship deteriorated, Plaintiffs sued their former distributors, Foodmatch, Inc. and Lancaster Fine Foods, Inc. (“Defendants”). In the suit, Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants’ competing fig jam impersonated Plaintiff’s product, more specifically, that Defendants stole the recipe for Plaintiff’s fig jam. Furthermore, Plaintiffs claimed that Defendants sold and distributed rejected jars of Plaintiff's fig spread, using Plaintiff’s trademark, without consent.

Plaintiffs brought claims for breach of contract, trademark infringement, counterfeiting, and misappropriation of trade secrets. After a four-week trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the jury found Defendants liable for misappropriation of trade secrets, trademark infringement and counterfeiting. The jury awarded Plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages, which Plaintiffs’ attorneys estimate will double to roughly $5 million after the damages are trebled. Plaintiffs' attorneys also stated the court will issue an injunction enjoining Defendants from using Plaintiff’s trade secrets in the future.

The case is Dalmatia Import Group v. Foodmatch, Inc. et al., 16-cv-02767 (E.D. Pa. Feb. 24, 2017).

On January 24, 2017, the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division, First Department, reinstated defendant Sergey Aleynikov's ("Aleynikov") guilty conviction for stealing trading software from Goldman Sachs ("Goldman"). The decision came after a series of litigation that sought to determine whether Aleynikov violated federal or state law by making an electronic copy of the software on an external hard drive just before he left Goldman to work at a competing company.

Aleynikov was formerly an employee of Goldman Sachs, where he worked as a computer programmer. During his time with Goldman, Aleynikov wrote and maintained software for high frequency trading computer programs, which are central to Goldman's business. Goldman took several measures to safeguard the software, some of which included increasing security, limiting employee access, and requiring all employees to sign a confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement. In 2009, Aleynikov left Goldman to work for Teza Technologies, one of Goldman's competitors. Before he left, he transferred a digital copy of Goldman's trading software to a hard drive outside the company's server. As a result, he faced criminal charges in federal and state court.

In February 2010, Aleynikov was charged with violating the National Stolen Property Act and the Economic Espionage Act. In December 2010, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York convicted him. However, on appeal the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed his conviction in April 2012.

Shortly after, in September 2012, Aleynikov was charged by the state of New York in New York County with two counts of unlawful use of secret scientific material and one count of unlawful duplication of computer related material. After trial in July 2015, the jury acquitted Aleynikov on the unlawful duplication of computer related material charge, and the court dismissed the charges for unlawful use of secret scientific material. The People appealed, and on January 24, 2017, the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division reversed, and reinstated his conviction with respect to the unlawful use of secret scientific material charge.

The Appellate Division reasoned that the evidence was sufficient to establish that Aleynikov misappropriated scientific information. According to the court's decision, Aleynikov did not challenge the People's contention that he electronically copied the Goldman software, nor did he deny that the software constitutes secret scientific material. Furthermore, the court rejected Aleynikov's arguments that he did not possess requisite intent to commit the offense and that he did not make a tangible copy of the software.

The case is The People of the State of New York v. Sergey Aleynikov, New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, No. 4447/12. A copy of the court's opinion can be found here: http://tsi.brooklaw.edu/cases/people-state-new-york-v-sergey-aleynikov/filings/sergey-aleynikov-found-guilty-again-stealing-

On Tuesday, December 6, 2016, In the Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. Et al v. Apple Inc. case, case number 15-777, the U.S. Supreme Court, reversed a Federal Circuit ruling that found that Samsung must pay its profit from the entire phones found to infringe Apple’s design patents, which covered the front face of the phones and the arrangement of icons on the home screen.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that owners of design patents are not always entitled to the total profits from the infringing product sold to consumers. In this case, the device has multiple components and thus the award may be limited to those specific features that infringed.

Chief Justice John Roberts also commented that “It seems to me that the design is applied to the exterior case of the phone. It’s not applied to all the chips and wires… so there shouldn’t be profits awarded based on the entire price of the phone.”

Apple did not dispute that it is entitled to profits only from the infringing articles of manufacture, but said that Samsung bared the burden to prove that the relevant article of manufacture was something less than the entire smartphone and failed to do that. The Supreme Court did not resolve whether, for each of the design patents at issue in the case, the article of manufacture was the smartphone or a component of the phone. This issue has been left to the Federal Circuit on remand.

The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent Numbers D593,087, D604,305 and D618,677. The case is Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al. v. Apple Inc., case number 15-777, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

America’s Test Kitchen Inc. (“Plaintiff”) owns multimedia publications and productions, including television programs such as America’s Test Kitchen, cooking magazines and books, and several websites. Plaintiff sued Christopher Kimball (“Defendant”), a celebrity chef and the former host of its TV shows. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant misappropriated its trade secrets and breached his fiduciary duty to the company. Plaintiff filed the lawsuit on October 31, 2016.

Defendant left Plaintiff’s program in November 2015, and recently developed his own program called Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. Plaintiff alleges that Defendant created his company using its image to attract new customers, and marketed his program as an enhanced version of America’s Test Kitchen. Plaintiff also contends that Defendant stole from its collection of recipes, TV show ideas, media contacts, and subscriber information. It seems Plaintiff and Defendant did not have a formal non-compete agreement in place.

Plaintiff is seeking damages against Defendant and a disgorgement of all profits that he has derived through the use of the trade secrets he allegedly misappropriated from America’s Test Kitchen. Plaintiff’s complaint also names Melissa Baldino (Defendant’s wife), Christine Gordon, and Deborah Broide as defendants, and claims that they aided and abetted Defendant’s breach of his fiduciary duties.

The case is America’s Test Kitchen, Inc., v. Christopher Kimball et al., 1684-cv-03325.

Plaintiff’s complaint can be found here: http://tsi.brooklaw.edu/cases/americas-test-kitchen-v-christopher-kimball-et-al/filings/america%E2%80%99s-test-kitchen-sues-former-h