Welcome to WilmerHale’s bulletin on recent trade secret case law and relevant news items. We’ve affectionately nicknamed it “Readily Ascertainable” because, unlike a trade secret, it should be easy to figure out. If you have any questions about these cases or the legal issues they implicate, our trade secret experts would be delighted to answer them.
This month, we cover decisions affirming dismissal under the statute of limitations for failure to investigate a reasonable suspicion of misappropriation and reversing a motion to dismiss, finding that a complaint's pleading of a confidentiality agreement and invention provision from an employment agreement, alone, was sufficient to establish efforts to maintain secrecy at the 12(b)(6) phase.
Group14 Technologies, Inc. v. Nexeon Limited, No. 25-996, 2025 WL 3187351 (9th Cir. Nov. 14, 2025)
Ninth Circuit affirms ruling that trade secret misappropriation is time-barred based on a failure to inquire.
Group14 Technologies, Inc., a company that develops lithium battery technology, sued Nexeon Limited in September 2022 on the grounds that Nexeon allegedly misappropriated trade secrets related to Group14’s silicon-carbon composite material for improved battery operation. Group14 alleged that Nexeon misappropriated information exchanged under a Materials Transfer and Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement between 2016 and early 2018. Because the Defend Trade Secrets Act has a three-year statute of limitations, the district court concluded that the suit was filed too late, as Group14 should have been on notice of Nexeon’s misappropriation at least as of January 2018 when Nexeon’s application to the UK government for funding was made public.
The Ninth Circuit agreed, holding that Group14 did not exercise reasonable diligence to learn of the misappropriation because “Group14 failed to inquire into Nexeon’s SUNRISE application, which it now claims included misappropriated trade secrets.”
Samuel Sherbrooke Corporate Ltd. v. Mayer et al., 159 F.4th 252 (4th Cir. Nov. 18, 2025)
Fourth Circuit reverses dismissal of trade secret suit, explaining that employment agreement confidentiality provision could be sufficient to establish secrecy
Plaintiff Samuel Sherbrooke Corporate Ltd. sued several former shareholders and a former employee, alleging that they had misappropriated trade secrets related to Sherbrooke’s software for analyzing medical records to project insurance contract risk and pricing. Sherbrooke’s complaint alleged it maintained its trade secrets’ confidentially, including through employment contracts that included a confidentiality provision and an “Inventions Provision” deeming inventions developed during employment to become Sherbrooke property.
The district court dismissed Sherbrooke’s complaint, in part for failure to adequately allege facts that the trade secrets were adequately maintained as secrets. The Fourth Circuit disagreed, acknowledging that “plaintiffs often allege that they did more than simply require a signed confidentiality agreement to maintain secrecy,” but declining to announce a brightline rule that employment agreement provisions could never be sufficient—standing alone—to establish the requisite secrecy. In so ruling, the Fourth Circuit emphasized the fact-sensitive nature of the trade secret analysis—i.e., that a confidentiality provision alone could potentially be enough, given that “[t]rade secrets take many forms and what may constitute ‘reasonable measures’ [to maintain secrecy] must be considered in light of the nature of the trade secret and the context in which it exists.”
The Fourth Circuit also agreed with the district court that Sherbrooke had plausibly alleged misappropriation, concluding that the complaint’s allegations “tell the story of the alleged misappropriation” by alleging that “Appellees created a competing business and used the Proprietary Software to assist that competing business.”
