A federal judge acquitted a former Google engineer on economic-espionage counts because the trial evidence did not prove he intended his trade-secret theft to benefit the Chinese government when it occurred.
The Seventh Circuit rejected software copyright and trade-secret claims where no evidence showed copied source code and the alleged secrets were public, visible, or too generic.
The Third Circuit upheld a fudge-recipe trade-secret verdict and attorney-fee awards on unsuccessful trademark and copyright claims.
The Ninth Circuit reversed a $40 million jury verdict against XP Power for stealing Comet Technologies’ semiconductor manufacturing trade secrets, finding the district court improperly placed the burden of proof on the defendant.
Apple filed a blockbuster trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI, io Products, and two former senior Apple engineers, alleging OpenAI systematically recruited Apple employees to steal confidential hardware engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain secrets for its AI device program.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction against a Dutch software company’s use of an American company’s brand and trade secrets, holding that Abitron Austria’s conduct-focused test for the territorial reach of U.S. IP law is satisfied where the defendant directly targeted U.S. customers online.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a trade secret misappropriation lawsuit filed by a dissolved Louisiana LLC, holding that under FRCP 17(b)(3) the relevant law is the state where suit is filed—Texas—and Texas law does not allow dissolved entities to bring new claims.
A Northern District of California federal judge partially confirmed an arbitration award protecting Tesla’s dry battery electrode trade secrets, upholding a narrow injunction blocking supplier Matthews International from selling certain battery equipment, while remanding other portions of the award.
The Eighth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for four former employees, holding that Wilbur-Ellis Company’s trade secret claims failed because it never specifically identified what trade secrets were taken or how — and that the coordinated mass departure to a competitor did not, without more, breach the employees’ duty of loyalty.
A Delaware federal judge dismissed Signant Health’s DTSA trade secret claims against Definium Therapeutics, finding that identifying confidential LSD-trial technology only in broad, categorical terms — without pinpointing the specific information allegedly misappropriated — is insufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.
The Supreme Court declined to review a $168 million trade secret award against Tata Consultancy Services, leaving intact the Fifth Circuit’s judgment upholding $56 million in compensatory damages and $112 million in punitive damages for TCS’s theft of life-insurance software trade secrets from Computer Sciences Corporation.
A federal judge denied former Google engineer Linwei Ding’s motion for a new trial on convictions for stealing more than 2,000 pages of Google AI trade secrets and committing economic espionage, rejecting his claim that prosecutors improperly excluded jurors of Chinese descent.
A federal judge dismissed xAI’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI with prejudice, holding that routine interviewing of a prospective employee does not constitute inducement to reveal trade secrets and that xAI failed to plausibly allege OpenAI knew any confidential information was disclosed.
Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California granted BMW a temporary restraining order blocking Zync Inc. from proceeding with an ITC trade secret investigation, finding BMW likely to succeed in enforcing a contractual forum selection clause designating German courts as the exclusive forum for disputes under their infotainment technology NDA.
The Fifth Circuit revived a trade secret RICO claim, holding that the systematic acquisition of trade secrets—not merely their ongoing use—can satisfy RICO’s ‘pattern of racketeering activity’ requirement, potentially enabling treble damages and attorney fees for trade secret owners whose secrets were stolen in a pattern of competitive IP raids.
Case: Joby Aero, Inc. v. Archer Aviation Inc., No. 25-cv-10703-SVK (N.D. Cal. June 5, 2026) Court: United States District Court,
A Northern District of California court allowed Joby Aero’s core DTSA claim over a stolen real estate exclusivity agreement to proceed while dismissing all of Archer Aviation’s counterclaims as impermissible shotgun pleadings.
Case: ProSync Technology Group, LLC v. Miller, No. SAG-26-1436 (D. Md. June 4, 2026) Court: United States District Court for
A Missouri federal court dismissed with prejudice all nine claims by a pro se plaintiff who alleged ChatGPT misappropriated her ’emotional-interaction model,’ holding that voluntarily inputting information into an AI tool defeats trade secret, CFAA, and privacy claims.
A federal magistrate judge in Houston denied a motion to dismiss trade secret and non-compete claims against a former territory manager who forwarded hundreds of confidential emails to his personal Gmail, deleted over 1,000 company emails, and joined a direct competitor.
The Federal Circuit reversed a $452 million jury verdict, holding that Insulet’s trade secret misappropriation claim under the Defend Trade Secrets Act was time-barred because Insulet knew or should have known of the alleged misappropriation more than three years before filing suit.
A Northern District of Illinois judge reduced a $58.9 million jury verdict to $10.4 million in a decade-long trade secret case involving fleet management technology for garbage trucks, finding that while the defendant’s conduct was reprehensible, the damages were excessive.
The Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s reduction of an $82 million jury verdict for breach of contract to just $3, and held that trade secret plaintiffs have a statutory right to pursue unjust enrichment damages under both the DTSA and Michigan’s trade secrets act.
A federal court in the Eastern District of Missouri denied cross-motions for summary judgment in a trade secret case where departing employees allegedly prepared requests for proposals for a competitor while still employed, sending the case to trial on misappropriation and fiduciary duty claims.
A federal magistrate in Kansas recommended adverse inference sanctions against OPISystems for spoliation of evidence in a trade secret case involving stolen agricultural grain-bin management source code, after finding that a former employee stored proprietary code on personal devices and a competitor failed to preserve it.
A Delaware jury unanimously found that Cummins Inc. misappropriated C3 AI trade secrets and awarded $23.3 million in damages, adding to the growing body of high-value trade secret verdicts involving proprietary AI technology.
The Sixth Circuit holds that district courts may not require ‘clear and convincing evidence’ for each preliminary injunction factor in trade secret cases, reversing a lower court’s denial of injunctive relief against an engineer who allegedly took proprietary documents to a competitor.
In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit affirmed only $1 in nominal damages for Sanyo’s admitted misuse of Oldnar’s touchscreen know-how under a joint development agreement, holding that the plaintiff’s sole royalty-based damages theory was legally inapplicable.
A federal court in Chicago denied BeiGene’s motion to dismiss AbbVie’s trade secret claims alleging that a former AbbVie scientist carried proprietary BTK degrader cancer drug designs in his memory to BeiGene, which then filed patent applications incorporating those designs within six months.
The Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction barring a venture lender from interfering with Google’s royalty-free license to manufacture specialized computer chips, affirming that Google’s licensing rights survived the shutdown of its startup partner CNEX Labs.
Following a $13 million jury verdict for trade secret misappropriation, a Texas federal court granted a permanent injunction but significantly narrowed its scope, and required plaintiffs to elect between overlapping damages theories to avoid double recovery.
A New York federal court denied Deloitte’s motion to dismiss trade secret misappropriation claims alleging the consulting giant posed as a partner to steal proprietary vaccine-tracking software and then used it to secure an $80 million CDC contract.
A Delaware federal judge denied Duracell’s motion to dismiss BASF’s trade secret claims over proprietary lithium-ion battery cathode technology, rejecting defenses of independent development and licensing.
Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court convicted four engineers and fined Tokyo Electron NT$150 million in the first-ever corporate conviction under Taiwan’s National Security Act, for theft of TSMC’s 2nm semiconductor process technology classified as a national core critical technology.
Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court convicted four engineers and fined Tokyo Electron NT$150 million for stealing TSMC’s advanced 2-nanometer chip manufacturing secrets, in the first corporate conviction under Taiwan’s amended National Security Act.
A federal court in North Carolina granted Joe Gibbs Racing a preliminary injunction barring former competition director Christopher Gabehart from retaining or using the team’s trade secrets, but declined to extend relief against his new employer, Spire Motorsports.
A Northern District of California court ruled that litigation funder Legalist, Inc. is not liable for attorney’s fees after the plaintiff’s trade secret case was dismissed as time-barred, holding that reviewing and approving only the initial complaint does not constitute sufficient control over the litigation.
The Federal Circuit reversed a $17 million trade secret verdict, holding that design concepts disclosed in prior patents are generally known and unprotectable as trade secrets even if never commercialized, while affirming a $1 million Lanham Act counterfeiting judgment.
After announcing 30,000 layoffs, Oracle secures a temporary restraining order barring a recently separated sales employee from disclosing trade secrets he had threatened to sell to the “highest bidder” absent an “unreasonable” fee. A primer on DTSA TRO practice in the RIF era.
The Federal Circuit addressed trade secret and copyright claims arising from TA Instruments’ alleged misappropriation of Malvern Panalytical’s confidential algorithms and software for rheology instruments — affirming the district court’s rulings on preemption of state trade secret claims and the scope of copyright protection for scientific measurement software.
The Federal Circuit addressed trade secret misappropriation claims between competing food processing equipment manufacturers — affirming the district court’s finding that Weber had misappropriated Provisur’s trade secrets through improper acquisition and use of confidential technical information about high-speed meat slicing systems, and upholding the damages award and injunction.
The Federal Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction protecting Masimo’s pulse oximeter algorithm as a trade secret, holding that prior publication of equivalent mathematics in a statistics journal did not make the algorithm generally known to those who could obtain economic value from it in the medical device field.