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7th Cir - Injunction did not adequately specify trade secrets

From our friends at JurisNotes.com Patriot Homes v. Forest River Housing (7th Cir 1/10/08) Decision Short Summary Patriot and Patriot Manufacturing, Inc. (collectively "Patriot") sued Forest and various individuals (collectively "Forest") for misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, and related claims. The trial court granted Patriot's motion for a preliminary injunction and the 7th Circuit vacated and remanded. The parties compete in the modular housing manufacturing industry. Patriot sued Forest and four former Patriot employees (now Forest employees) for copying its home designs and misappropriating its trade secrets. Before leaving Patriot, the four employees copied information from the company's computers and brought the materials with them when they joined Forest. Forest allegedly used this information to build and sell modular homes. Forest argues that Patriot's alleged trade secrets are readily ascertainable and in the public domain. After the preliminary injunction hearing, Forest sent FOIA requests to various states requesting copies of the documents that Patriot submitted for state approval. In response, Forest obtained thousands of documents, including Patriot's systems manuals, quality assurance manual, and individual modular submissions. Forest contends that the trial court's injunction is so vague as to constitute only a general prohibition not to break the law, leaving it without guidance as to when Forest's actions might violate the injunction. The 7th Circuit agreed that it was not clear from the injunction order what the trade secret or confidential information was in this case. Patriot claimed that its trade secret was the "playbook" for constructing modular homes, consisting of its blueprints, engineering calculations, quality control manuals, and other documents. Patriot did not deny that much of the information identified by it was readily available when Forest submitted its FOIA requests. Forest could not tell whether using the information it obtained through the FOIA requests would violate the injunction. It was up to the trial court to clearly delineate Forest's responsibilities pursuant to the injunction. As the matter now stood, Forest would need to engage in guesswork in order to determine if it was engaging in activities that violated the injunction, since the order itself was little more than a recitation of the law. Accordingly, vacatur of the preliminary injunction was necessary because it lacked the requisite specificity.

Full post as published by The Trade Secrets Vault on January 14, 2008 (boomark / email).