Oracle v. Procore — Court Refuses to Exclude Oracle’s Trade Secret Damages and Forensics Experts, Despite Rule 26 Violation

Background

Oracle America, Oracle International and Textura Corporation sued Procore Technologies and Procore Payment Services in October 2024, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). Oracle says Procore used trade secrets about Textura Payment Management (TPM), construction project payment software, to build a competing product called Procore Pay, largely through a former Oracle employee who joined Procore in late 2021. Oracle’s trade secret disclosures started at more than 450 alleged trade secrets and were narrowed over time to 34, grouped into six categories. The order is dated September 25, 2026, but the court’s docket stamp shows it was filed on October 14, 2026.

Procore filed three motions: to exclude the report of Oracle’s damages expert, Melissa Bennis; to exclude portions of the report of Oracle’s forensics expert, Andrew Crain; and to strike parts of Crain’s report because it relied on forensic images of two Oracle laptops that Oracle had not produced to Procore.

The Court’s Holding

The court denied all three motions.

Damages expert (Bennis). Procore argued the report fails to apportion damages among individual trade secrets, rests on an unreliable price-erosion opinion, offers an unreliable reasonable royalty, and uses an unsupported damages period. The court acknowledged that a jury must be able to calculate damages for only those trade secrets found misappropriated, and that the report apportions among six categories but not individual trade secret files. But it declined to exclude the report. Insufficient apportionment does not by itself make a report unreliable under Rule 702; this report offered some methodology, including justifications for awarding full category-level damages if Procore had no alternatives to the remaining secrets, and ways to adjust by product tool or time frame. The court warned that, as in a prior case where a plaintiff lost its damages after a jury found fewer than all trade secrets misappropriated, Oracle could face problems after trial if the evidence does not support the award.

On price erosion, relying on sales data compiled for litigation did not make the opinion unreliable, because the expert considered historical customer reaction to price increases and inflation, and arguments about competitor pricing and demand elasticity are fact disputes for cross-examination. The reasonable royalty opinion, a sum of avoided R&D and price erosion, was not unreliable merely because it applied the Georgia-Pacific factors to a figure derived quantitatively. The damages period through trial was supported by another expert’s opinion that Procore has not independently developed the trade secrets and would not have launched Procore Pay in a commercially reasonable time without them.

Forensics expert (Crain). The court rejected three narrow objections as largely semantic. Describing iCloud “stub” placeholder files as “existing on” a device was plausibly accurate, and the report was careful to distinguish stubs from full files. Statements that a factory reset reflects a decision to destroy data, and that the former employee engaged in a “pattern” of transferring files, were technical opinions based on how the technology works rather than opinions on intent or state of mind. And section headings attributing conduct to “Procore” were a reasonable shorthand for facts about a Procore director, leaving Procore free to contest legal attribution.

Motion to strike for nonproduction. The court found that Oracle violated Rule 26 and Request for Production No. 44. Under a forensic inspection protocol, a neutral examiner held device images and produced reports to the parties, yet Oracle gave raw images of the former employee’s Oracle laptops to its expert without producing them to Procore. Providing the images to the neutral was no substitute, and Oracle could not claim that the protocol let it use the raw images for its own claims but barred it from handing them over. Still, the court found the violation harmless: Oracle produced the images on April 17, 2026, both sides’ forensic experts had a chance to analyze them, Procore identified no specific discovery it would have pursued differently, and disruption of trial was negligible. The motion to strike was denied.

Key Takeaways

• A damages report that apportions by trade secret category rather than by individual trade secret is not automatically excluded, but the plaintiff risks a failure of proof at trial if the jury finds fewer secrets misappropriated.
• Where a defendant could not have developed its product without the trade secrets, full lost profits or avoided R&D may be justified, a theory the court found sufficient to survive a motion to exclude.
• Expert data compiled for litigation is not for that reason unreliable, and disputes about assumptions such as price elasticity usually go to weight, not admissibility.
• A party that gives raw materials to its expert must produce them under Rule 26, even when a forensic protocol limits what the neutral may share; late production may cure the harm.

Why It Matters

Trade secret cases often turn on damages, and this ruling shows how courts handle the challenge of valuing large, narrowed lists of alleged secrets. For plaintiffs, it supports presenting damages models flexible enough to survive trial outcomes where only some secrets are found misappropriated. For defendants, it signals that attacks on apportionment may be better suited to cross-examination and post-trial motions than to Daubert exclusion.

The decision is also a reminder that forensic protocols do not replace ordinary disclosure duties. Parties who use device images in expert reports should expect to produce them. The ruling is a pretrial evidentiary order in a pending case and does not decide whether any trade secret was misappropriated.