Control Technology v. Omni Energy — Court Denies Both Sides’ Summary Judgment in Trade Secret Case Involving Departing Employees Who Secretly Prepared RFPs for Competitor

Background

Control Technology & Solutions (CTS) is an energy service company that helps public and private sector clients improve energy efficiency. The company invests significant resources — sometimes up to a year of development work at its own cost — preparing proposals for public-sector clients, including obtaining drawings, building plans, subcontractor bids, and navigating the public-bid process. CTS estimated it had an 80-85% better chance of winning a contract when it helped create the request for proposals (RFP).

In late 2020, several long-time CTS employees — including Mark Graves (nearly 15 years at CTS), Jim Thurman, and others — resigned and founded Omni Energy Partners, a direct competitor. CTS alleged that while still employed, the departing employees secretly prepared RFPs for public-sector clients and positioned Omni Energy to win the resulting contracts. After the employees left, Omni Energy allegedly won multiple school-district contracts that CTS had been developing.

CTS sued for trade secret misappropriation under both federal and state law, along with breach of fiduciary duty and other claims. Both sides moved for summary judgment.

The Court’s Holding

The court denied both motions for summary judgment, finding genuine disputes of material fact on virtually every contested issue. The court also granted CTS’s motion to exclude defendants’ expert witnesses Douglas Sparr and David Weiner, finding their testimony unreliable.

On CTS’s trade secret claims, the court found sufficient evidence that CTS’s client-specific development work — including its pricing methodologies, client needs assessments, and project designs — could qualify as protectable trade secrets, and that the departing employees may have used that information to benefit Omni Energy. But the court also found genuine fact disputes about whether CTS took reasonable steps to protect the information and whether the employees’ actions constituted misappropriation rather than use of general skill and knowledge.

On the fiduciary duty claims, the court found evidence supporting both sides’ positions on whether the employees began competing while still employed at CTS. The jury would need to resolve credibility disputes about the timing and nature of the employees’ pre-departure activities.

Key Takeaways

• Client-specific development work in the energy services industry — including pricing methodologies, RFP strategies, and project designs — can qualify as protectable trade secrets, even when individual components may be publicly available.
• Employees who prepare to compete while still employed face serious legal exposure for breach of fiduciary duty, especially when they are preparing proposals for the same clients their employer is developing.
• Expert testimony on trade secret damages must be based on reliable methodology — the court excluded defendants’ experts for failing to meet Daubert standards.
• The line between using general industry knowledge (permitted) and misappropriating specific trade secrets (prohibited) often creates fact disputes that preclude summary judgment.

Why It Matters

This case illustrates a recurring problem in service industries: when key employees leave to form a competitor, they inevitably carry knowledge about the employer’s clients, pricing, and strategies. The challenge is distinguishing between the general expertise employees are free to take with them and the specific trade secrets they are not. Here, the court’s refusal to grant summary judgment to either side means a jury will decide where that line falls — making this case a potential bellwether for trade secret litigation in the energy services sector. For employers, the decision reinforces the importance of implementing clear confidentiality agreements and documenting what constitutes trade secret information before employees depart.