Intellectual Property Law

Trade Secret Lawsuits on the Rise

By Brian Wm. Higgin

     Hat tip to the Womble Carlyle Trade Secret Blog for publishing interesting statistics about trade secret lawsuits filed in the US. In its post a few weeks ago, the Womble bloggers reported the results of their search of the Westlaw federal database (federal district, appeals and Supreme Court cases) for the term "trade secrets," which returned 905 cases for 2007. That was a 20% increase over the number of published cases in 2006 (754 cases), and a 231% increase since 1997 (273 cases). Check out their post for cautionary notes relating to the results. The bloggers' conclusion: "it would be hard to deny that something's going on."

     Womble's research also found that there were 79 cases reported in 2007 relating to the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, which was a 46% increase over 2006 (54 cases), and a 780% increase over 1997 (1 case).

     Out of curiosity, I searched Lexis' "MD Federal & State Cases, Combined" database for "trade secrets" and found 7 reported cases in 2007, compared to 14 in 2006 (not all of which are actual trade secret cases):

• Phoenix Renovation Corp. v. Rodriguez, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 29253 (4th Cir. 2007) (unpublished)
  
  
• GO Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 508 F.3d 170; 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 26722 (4th Cir. 2007)
  
  
• Darden v. Peters, 488 F.3d 277; 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 12115 (4th Cir. 2007), cert. denied, 2008 U.S. LEXIS 2125 (2008)
  
  
• DRC, Inc. v. Custer Battles, LLC, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 11518 (4th Cir. 2007) (unpublished)
  
  
• NaturaLawn of Am., Inc. v. West Group, LLC, 484 F. Supp. 2d 392; 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29774 (4th Cir. 2007)
  
  
• Tobacco Tech., Inc. v. Taiga Int'l N.V., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13083 (D. Md. 2007)
  
  
• Conaway v. Deane, 401 Md. 219; 2007 Md. LEXIS 575 (Md. 2007)

Full post as published by Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog on May 23, 2008 (boomark / email).