"List of Holiday-Related Trade Secret/Non-Compete Cases"

Whether you are a young child missing teeth, or a grown-up taking account of her life, or Santa Claus himself checking up on everyone else’s life, many of us make lists at holiday time.  They can be lists of gifts we want, or those we need to get, or people we wish to see or write to, or things we need or want to do before the end of the year.  Sometimes they are just lists of things that happened this year or that we want to happen next year.  Certainly there are lots of “Top Ten” holiday lists.  This one may be neither an exception nor exceptional, but here is a “Top Ten List of Holiday-Related Trade Secret/Non-Compete Cases”:

1. “It may be better to be naughty than nice”—In Ivy Mar Co., Inc. v. CR Seasons Ltd., 907 F. Supp. 547 (EDNY 1995), the Court denied plaintiff a preliminary injunction in a non-compete/trade secret case in large part because of plaintiff’s months-long delay in bringing the action. This occurred notwithstanding plaintiff’s claim that it only delayed filing the action so as not to ruin Christmas—“they delayed bringing this motion because they feared defendant Jetmax would not ship goods to its customers during the Christmas season,” or so they claimed.
2. “Or maybe not.”—In Agero Inc. v. Rubin et al., an appellate court in Massachusetts affirmed dismissal of plaintiff’s claims, holding that Agero failed to establish that two of the defendants, Timothy Schneider and Matthew Capozzi, owed Agero a duty of loyalty.  Though the Court when on at some length as to the reasons it had for affirming the result against Agero, what was perhaps most telling was the Court’s taking the time to express a reason that it was not relying on:
   • We need not comment on the defendants' suggestion that Agero brought this complaint against them, despite Agero's size and apparent lack of interest in pursuing ViewPoint, to send a message to other Agero employees who might entertain thoughts of leaving and lawfully competing. That Agero reportedly sued Schneider on Christmas Eve, when Schneider's oldest child was five years old, might lend credence to the charge. However, we do reiterate that noncompetition agreements would be the better practice to achieve that goal. Based on the record before us, Agero's claims were properly dismissed.
3. “Check your list twice”—If you think departing employees had accomplices or other help, don’t just add a bunch of John Does to your complaint without defining and describing who those co-conspirators are.  Otherwise you run the risk of having those claims dismissed and those avenues of discovery shut down in your non-compete or trade secret case just as happens in other types of cases, such as Southwest Materials Handling Co. v. Nissan Motor Co., 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16275 (N.D. Tex. 2000), where the court said, with respect to civil conspiracy allegations against John Doe defendants, that "[t]his Court is not in the position of channeling or divining potential co-conspirators who are presently as tangible as Santa Claus, the Easter [B]unny or the Tooth Fairy."  I guess the court did not find the testimony of Frank Church credible.
4. “What is the secret to making a good snowman?”—Though there is now a patent on for an apparatus for facilitating the construction of a snow man/woman out of snow, making snowman holiday decorations has also spawned litigation like the case of  Gemmy Industries Corporation v. Chrisha Creations Limited, Dist. Court, SD New York 2004. In Gemmy, plaintiff claimed that defendant’s marketing of an inflatable snow man, among other causes of action, violated plaintiff’s trade secrets, especially after defendant hired plaintiff’s former sales representative.  But the court concluded that even plaintiff did not treat the snowman and its marketing as involving trade secrets since plaintiff “did not request and [the sales representative] did not execute any non-disclosure agreement, non-compete agreement or confidentiality agreement prior to acting as a sales representative for [plaintiff].”
5. “‘It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.’”—Dickens’ closing words in A Christmas Carol were a celebration of the Christmas spirit, and sharing but not everyone wants to share the knowledge they have about Christmas traditions.  While some have asked, we think tongue in cheek, whether Christmas may be patented, it does appear that at least some aspects of our Christmas traditions can be protected as trade secrets.  In the case of IPI, INC. v. Monaghan, 2008 Ohio 975 (Court of Appeals, 6th Appellate Dist. 2008), an Ohio Court found that plaintiff had stated a claim for relief, and could proceed to trial, on a claim that plaintiff’s unique methods of "'event' photography" such as involved in its “Santa Claus programs” could involve protectable trade secrets under the Ohio Trade Secrets Act, where plaintiff had alleged that “it developed, inter alia, ‘confidential and specialized techniques for event photography, a business marketing plan for its franchisees, a training program, and proprietary and confidential software that it makes available to its franchise systems’” and that “appellees/cross-appellants misappropriated these systems, techniques, etc., that is, its alleged trade secrets. If it is shown that these are truly trade secrets and that appellees/cross-appellants misappropriated the same, IPI would be directly injured by that misappropriation.”
   • Not all courts, however, are willing to give litigants credit for the alleged uniqueness of their holiday-related ideas. This can be seen in Oxenhandler v. Dime Sav. Bank of Brooklyn, 33 Misc. 2d 626 (NY Supreme Court 1962), where plaintiff was denied relief in his trade secret/business information claims against the financial institution to which he had suggested “a ‘Chanukah Savings Plan’ which could be made available to [the bank’s] Jewish depositors in the same manner that a Christmas Club had been available to the general public.”  In fact, the Court concluded that “plaintiff's idea was neither new, novel, original nor concrete,” and that the Court “cannot perceive how plaintiff on any theory in law can succeed in this action.”  New settings for Christmas Savings Clubs faired no better as alleged trade secrets or protectable ideas either, as seen in Moore v. Ford Motor Co., 43 F. 2d 685 (2nd Cir. 1930). There, plaintiff Moore sought to protect the idea of Christmas Club accounts as a way to save for down payments on automobiles.  The Court concluded that there was nothing secret or unique about such a plan, and that “idea was old in Christmas Savings clubs” for some time.
6. “Beware the office Christmas party.”—Normally this is a phrase you see in HR guides, but it can also hold true in the non-compete area of the law as seen in Plastic Surgery Associates Of Kingsport Inc. v. Pastrick, a 2015 decision of the Tennessee Court Of Appeals 2015. In this case, the court held that the defendant was indeed an employee and an owner of the plaintiff medical practice, and subject to the express terms of his employment agreement (including its non-compete provisions) and liable as an owner for a portion of the practice’s debts.  The court rested its conclusions of ownership on three key facts, one of which was that defendant “hosted a Christmas party at his home that was billed to the company.”  Unless that party was epic, it probably would have been cheaper to pay for the punch and appetizers out of his own pocket.  It would have eliminated that troublesome fact and helped him avoid the necessity of disgorging $246,633.00.
7. “Christmas cards, why bother?”—In Vizant Technologies, LLC v. Whitchurch, 97 F. Supp. 3d 618 (ED Pa. 2015), plaintiff brought a ten-count complaint against defendant alleging misappropriation of trade secrets in violation of the Delaware Uniform Trade Secrets Act ("DUTSA") as well as two violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"), breach of contract, defamation, tortious interference with existing and prospective relationships, abuse of process, conversion, fraud, and civil conspiracy. Finding that defendant was using confidential information and otherwise acting tortiously in contacting plaintiff’s (i.e. her former employer’s) employees, officers, and directors, and with their family members, and in interfering with plaintiff’s business with customers.  This resulted in Whitchurch’s being enjoined from carrying through on her stated “intention to send a ‘Christmas card direct mail piece’” out further criticizing Vizant and its principals to that same audience.
8. “New Year’s resolutions should be thought out.”—Many times, employees will decide to leave for new employment after the upcoming holidays pass.  So it was in Alexander & Alexander v. Wohlman, 578 P. 2d 530 (Wash: Court of Appeals, 1st Div. 1978), where “[b]etween Christmas 1975 and New Year's Day 1976, the defendants decided to leave the employment of A&A.”   The problem was not their resolve to leave, but the things that they did before they left:
   • On Friday afternoon, January 16, 1976, after Mr. Maier, the manager of the Seattle office, had left for the weekend, they submitted their letters of resignation and took with them personal possessions and certain schedule books for use as forms in the conduct of their business. Between January 12 and 16, 1976, each of the defendants personally contacted clients of theirs to inform them of their decision to leave A&A and the formation of the new firm, Wohlman & Sargent, Inc. On January 17 and 19 defendants sent letters to clients requesting broker-of-record letters.
   • The appeals court found that such conduct did violate their legal obligations to A&A, and found them liable for damages.
9. “Sometimes you get coal in your stocking.”—Courts often work through the holidays, despite the general impression to the contrary. For instance, in Direx Israel, Ltd. v. Breakthrough Medical Corp., 952 F. 2d 802 (4^th Cir. 1991), plaintiff obtained a preliminary injunction from the District Court against the defendant who, when he was discharged, illegally appropriated and exploited the plaintiffs' trade secrets, and were using such trade secrets to manufacture, with intent to market, a machine competitive with the plaintiffs' product.  The 4^th Circuit reversed the grant of the preliminary injunction, but did so “without prejudice to the right of the plaintiffs to renew such motion on the basis of any new or additional facts that may have occurred since the grant under review.”  The appellate court’s decision issued on December 24^th.  Likewise, in Viad Corp. v. Cordial, 299 F. Supp. 2d 466 (WD Pa. 2003), the Court issued a Christmas Eve denial of a preliminary injunction request in case in which Defendants Cordial and Hellberg were alleged to have violated their employment contracts, which prohibited them from competing with plaintiff directly or indirectly, or aiding its competitors, for a period of one year following the termination of their employment, though in the holiday spirit the Court pointed out that plaintiff and defendants had been “represented by counsel who tried the matter skillfully and efficiently.”
10. “Sometimes, though, you get what you asked for.”—In Devos Ltd. v. Record, Dist. Court, ED New York 2015, on the other hand, the court issued on Christmas Eve a wide ranging injunction against defendants in a trade secret misappropriation and unfair competition case even though the plaintiff had been indicted and had been placed on a federal exclusion list that meant that no federal agency can do business with plaintiff and that any pharmaceutical distributor who receives federal funding, including Medicare and Medicaid (which includes almost every distributor of pharmaceuticals), also cannot do business with plaintiff. Concluding that an indictment was just an accusation of being naughty rather than a finding of same, the court issued the injunction.  There was no mention of where Santa had come out when double checking Devos’ placement on his list.

Happy holidays.