Trade Secret

December 5, 2023

One of the fundamentals to trade secret litigation is that the trade secret has a monetary value, and the value, if the secret was out, would go down. Intuitively, we know this. The value of certain beverage stocks would go down if their recipes were made public, right?

But the same thing might be true of a politician. If the politician’s net worth is only $2 billion instead of $5 billion, perhaps the politician’s appeal to voters is lessened. And, in such a case, I would argue the value of the trade secret (knowing the politician’s net worth) is equal to the salary the politician can draw while in office if re-elected, plus all the financial benefits the politician would reap by changing laws while in office to benefit the politician personally. It would be hard to predict this number in advance, but we could pull and average based on past financial gains while in the same or similar office.

October 3, 2023

Since 2016, trade secret misappropriation is a federal cause of action. This makes trade secret cases more interesting for large businesses, because they are no longer hindered by state jurisdiction limits and rules. I.e. there’s more money at play.

August 1, 2023

In 2006, an underpaid secretary stole some secret recipes from Coca-Cola (not THE recipe, but rather some products in development) and tried to sell them to Pepsi. But Pepsi, doing what any reasonable company would do, warned Coca-Cola and prompted an undercover FBI investigation. The secretary was eventually sentenced to 8 years behind bars. We tried to find out how little the secretary was paid to justify her theft, but that kind of information was a Trade Secret.