Recently Filed Cases

Gene Codes Forensics, Inc. (GCF), a Michigan-based company, has accused the New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) of improperly sharing proprietary information about its software with the FBI. The software, named Mass-Fatality Identification System (M-FISys) was used to help identify victims of the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks. According to GCF, OCME employees were extracting information from M-FISys software in order to help the FBI develop its own software. In response, the city claims that 1) it obtained a "perpetual, royalty-free" license to use the M-FISys software for noncommercial purposes; 2) it helped developed the software; and 3) had some ownership rights. The court is currently deciding the defendant's motion for summary judgment.

Oracle Systems Corporation, formerly Passlogix (a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corporation that has since dissolved), sued 2FA Technology, LLC. alleging that 2FA threatened illegitimate legal action, breached contractual obligations, exploited Passlogix’s resources, and sought to injure Passlogix's competitive position and reputation. Oracle Systems Corp. filed a motion for partial summary judgment, which is currently pending before the court.

This case is related to 2FA Technology, LLC v. Oracle Corp. (10-cv-9648), a later-filed case by the defendant in this action, currently stayed pending the disposition of the summary judgment motion here.

On August 18, 2011, Judge Walls of the District Court of the District of New Jersey held in Syncsort Incorporated v. Innovative Routines International, Inc. that a trade secret does not automatically lose its secret status if it has been posted online. His opinion, instead, offered practical guidance on how to determine whether a trade secret should remain secret after exposure on the Internet.

The case dates back to July 29, 2004, when Syncsort Incorporated (“Syncsort”) filed suit against its competitor in the data transformation market, Innovative Routines International, Inc. (“IRI”). As explained in the complaint, data transformation is the process of taking data in one form and changing it to another, such as by editing, reordering, or aggregating portions of the data. Syncsort’s and IRI’s data transformation programs (SyncSort UNIX and CoSORT, respectively) were incompatible.

Syncsort alleged that IRI misappropriated 1) the SyncSort UNIX command language, an “extensive symbolic system by which a user instructs the SyncSort UNIX program to perform specific data processing and transformation jobs” and 2) the SyncSort Unix Reference Guide that “defines commands, parameters and syntax and formal grammar definitions of the SyncSort UNIX command language.” In 2000, IRI developed software programs, SSU2SCL and RESCRIPT, which translated the SynSort UNIX command language for compatibility with CoSORT. Syncsort alleged that the translation programs were developed using pilfered scripts from the SyncSort UNIX command language and the Reference Guide, which IRI partly obtained from various websites.

IRI challenged that the scripts it found on the Internet had already lost their trade secret status and that Syncsort did not take precautions to maintain the secrecy of the scripts. Judge Walls, however, declared that “public posting of parts of the command language did not destroy the trade secret because the information contained in those postings were insufficient to develop the translator.” He considered the circumstances around each online posting and concluded that Syncsort did not lose its trade secrets. He wrote, “Widespread, anonymous publication of the information over the Internet may destroy its status as a trade secret.... But publication on the Internet may not destroy a secret if it is ‘sufficiently obscure or transient or otherwise limited so that it does not become generally known to the relevant people, i.e., potential competitors or other persons to whom the information would have some economic concern.’ The guiding ‘concern is whether the information has retained its value to the creator in spite of the publication.’”

Importantly, this decision marks a progressive benchmark in the acknowledgment in federal courts of the vast and pervasive nature of the internet. Moreover, Judge Walls also recognized the inevitable interplay with the internet and trade secret information, and how even if available on the internet, information may retain trade secret status if it cannot be replicated and is of some value.

On June 10, 2015, Lynx Systems Developers Inc. (“Lynx”) sued Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp. (“Zebra”) in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts for a number of claims including misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, and fraud. The dispute between the two parties stemmed from a joint venture the parties engaged in to build a system that would track NFL football players’ actions in real time using hardware installed in players’ shoulder pads. The business relationship between the parties disintegrated and the parties then developed competing tracking systems independently. After Zebra won a contract with the NFL, Lynx brought the initial suit in Massachusetts District Court.

Last week, in response to the complaint, Zebra filed a motion to dismiss the suit in Massachusetts District Court and on August 20, 2015, brought a new complaint against Lynx in Santa Clara County Superior Court in Santa Clara, California. Zebra’s complaint pleads for declaratory relief of no (1) trade secret misappropriation, (2) breach of contract, (3) interference with existing and advantageous business relationships, (4) fraud, (5) breach of fiduciary duty, (6) unfair competition or unfair or deceptive acts, (7) unjust enrichment, (8) conversion, and (9) intentional interference with prospective contractual and advantageous business and economic relationships. The California case is filed under docket number 115CV284620.