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WD Pa - Stored Communications Act preemption clause did not apply.

From our friends at Jurisnotes.com Ideal Aerosmith, Inc. v. Acutronic USA (WD Pa 4/23/08) Ideal sued Acutronic and others (collectively "Acutronic") for misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims. The court denied Acutronic's motion for judgment on the pleadings. Ideal briefly operated the business of a competitor, Carco Electronics, while Carco was in bankruptcy. In connection with its operation, Ideal hired Carco's employees and used Carco's email addresses. Carco was subsequently acquired by Acutronic. The former Carco employees hired by Ideal did not join Acutronic, but remained Ideal employees and were given new Ideal email addresses. Ideal alleges that despite these new email addresses, former Carco employees and third-parties doing business with Ideal inadvertently continued to send communications using the old Carco email addresses. According to Ideal, Acutronic, which now owned the Carco servers, caused the servers to redirect those email messages to an Acutronic server. Acutronic then read the messages, some of which allegedly contained Ideal trade secrets.

Full post as published by The Trade Secrets Vault on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).