"The Federal Circuit reversed trade-secret liability and vacated related damages after concluding that the plaintiffs had not shown protectable trade secrets under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act."
"The employer sought relief that extended beyond protecting confidential information, requesting restrictions that would effectively bar a former inventor from assisting others in challenging, designing around, or evaluating patents."
"Cornell addresses the problem from the liability side: information disclosed in patents, available in published materials, or generally known in the field cannot be turned into a trade secret merely by labeling it confidential."
"Even where narrow protection for genuine secrets is appropriate, trade secret law should not be used to restrain a former technical employee from using public information, general expertise."
A recent Federal Circuit decision clarified that published patent materials do not qualify as trade secrets under California law. The court reversed trade-secret liability in a case where plaintiffs failed to demonstrate protectable secrets. Additionally, a California ruling examined the limits of secrecy injunctions, emphasizing that while protecting genuine secrets is valid, restraining lawful patent-related work is not permissible. Both rulings highlight the distinction between actual secrecy and public knowledge, reinforcing that trade secret law cannot extend to information already available in the public domain.
Read at IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Intellectual Property Law
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