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.
For this installment of Readily Ascertainable, we offer a double edition covering trade secret developments from January and February 2026. For January, we cover decisions underscoring the need for trade secret plaintiffs to be especially careful to define software-related trade secrets with particularity, sanctioning a corporate trade secret plaintiff for the “factual weakness” of its misappropriation allegations, and a reminder from the Fifth Circuit that any alleged damages must be tied to specific misappropriated trade secrets. For February, we cover a decision dismissing a case based on failure to allege more than circumstantial evidence of misappropriation, and a decision spotlighting how the statute of limitations clock can start at different times for state and federal claims.
January 2026
Applied Predictive Techs., Inc. v. Marketdial, Inc., No. 2024-1751, 2026 WL 218291 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 28, 2026)
Federal Circuit affirms summary judgment of no misappropriation where plaintiff failed to clearly define and substantiate alleged trade secrets.
Applied Predictive Technologies (APT), a business analytics software company, brought suit under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and Utah law. APT alleged that Marketdial, its competitor, misappropriated 14 trade secrets, including internal deployment guides, partner briefing materials, and customized data feeds. The district court granted Marketdial summary judgment on the grounds that APT’s trade secret descriptions were impermissibly high-level and generalized.
The Federal Circuit affirmed on three bases. First, it agreed that APT’s descriptions of its claimed trade secrets provided only “cursory, high-level descriptions of different categories or sources of information without more”—insufficient to carry APT’s burden on trade secret validity. Second, contrary to APT’s argument that at summary judgment it did not bear the burden to show that its claimed trade secrets were not generally known or readily ascertainable, the court held that APT was “required to sufficiently identify and define its alleged trade secret such that the fact-finder can discern whether it meets the statutory definition.” Third, none of the evidence that APT cited in opposing summary judgment helped it prove that its asserted trade secrets met each statutory element of the DTSA and Utah trade secret law. In particular, the Federal Circuit pointed out APT’s reliance on “long string cites lacking explanatory parentheticals or identifiable structure,” noting that courts are not required to “assemble the bits and pieces” of a plaintiff’s trade secret claim.
Trinseo Europe GmbH v. Kellogg Brown & Root, L.L.C., 165 F.4th 399, 407 (5th Cir. 2026)
Fifth Circuit confirms that damages theories must be carefully apportioned to the specific trade secrets proven to be misappropriated.
Trinseo, a chemical manufacturing company, brought suit under the DTSA against competitor Kellogg and others for misappropriating trade secrets related to how Trinseo makes polycarbonate plastic at an industrial scale. A jury found defendants misappropriated four of Trinseo’s 10 alleged trade secrets. The district court, however, vacated the damages award due to Trinseo’s failure to apportion its claimed damages by individual trade secret. Still, the district court left the jury’s liability findings intact. Based on those liability findings, the court granted Trinseo a permanent injunction, forbidding defendants from using any of Trinseo’s claimed trade secrets and ordering them to destroy or return all materials in their possession containing any Trinseo confidential information. Trinseo appealed, in part, arguing that the district court erred in relying on patent law apportionment principles to nullify the jury’s damages awards in a trade secret case.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rulings. It held that the damages award could not stand because “like in patent law cases, trade secret misappropriation damages must reflect the value attributable to the information or technology that is misappropriated by the defendant.” The Court noted that both Federal Circuit and Fifth Circuit precedent supported the “commonsense notion that trade secret damages must be tied to the defendant’s wrongful conduct—i.e., the misappropriation.” Because Trinseo had “bundled all of its alleged trade secrets damages together,” the jury did not have a reasonable basis to award damages based on the misappropriation of only the four trade secrets it found to be misappropriated.
NEXT Payment Sols., Inc. v. CLEAResult Consulting, Inc., 163 F.4th 1091 (7th Cir. 2026)
Seventh Circuit rejects software trade secret claims described in functional terms rather than technical implementation.
Plaintiff NEXT developed a custom online appointment‑booking system (the “FAST tool”) for defendant CLEAResult. The FAST tool allowed CLEAResult’s customers to book in‑home service appointments through a web browser while enabling CLEAResult to match and schedule those customers with available service technicians. Later, after CLEAResult decided to transition to a different appointment-booking platform, it conducted an internal assessment to identify how its new system could be tweaked to have functionality and features similar to the FAST tool. NEXT learned of this assessment and sued CLEAResult under the DTSA for misappropriating NEXT’s trade secrets embodied in the FAST tool.
CLEAResult successfully moved for summary judgment, arguing that NEXT failed to identify its claimed software trade secrets with sufficient specificity. The district court held that although NEXT identified dozens of software “modules” and combinations thereof, it described them in “vague and generic language” consisting only of the software’s function. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, holding that NEXT’s failure to “identify any specific algorithms, source code, or methodologies underlying” its platform’s functionality “makes it impossible to distinguish between the aspects of the FAST tool that are generally known and ascertainable, and those which NEXT contends are secret and derive value from being kept as such.” The court also rejected NEXT’s argument that features accessible only to CLEAResult through its back-end (i.e., behind-the-scenes) access to the FAST tool automatically qualify as trade secrets. The court explained that information may be readily ascertainable even if it is not publicly available—for example, where the functionality is “obvious and apparent” to users interacting with the software. While acknowledging that software source code and nonobvious architectures can qualify for protection if properly identified, the court emphasized that plaintiffs must articulate those secrets with sufficient precision to allow courts and juries to assess their secrecy and value.
Allstate Insurance Co. v. Freeman, No. 24-CV-479-JDP, 2026 WL 45189 (W.D. Wis. Jan. 7, 2026)
Wisconsin district court reminds litigants that speculation is not misappropriation, citing “factual weakness” of plaintiff’s claims in imposing Rule 11 sanctions.
Defendant Deanna Freeman was sued for trade secret misappropriation under the DTSA and Wisconsin law by Allstate Insurance, her former employer, after Allstate noticed that several of its customers within Freeman’s former assigned sales territory canceled their policies shortly after Freeman’s resignation. Allstate accused Freeman of stealing trade secrets from its internal databases—comprising customers’ names and contact information, details about those customers’ insurance policies, and their coverage preferences—by retaining (1) that information on a personal cellphone she also used to conduct Allstate business and (2) handwritten notes that she took while fielding customer calls while at Allstate.
Freeman responded that while she had not affirmatively sought out any Allstate customers, she advertised her new job with an Allstate competitor on social media and responded to requests on social media from then-Allstate customers—the majority of whom were Freeman’s family and friends—asking for pricing comparisons. Freeman moved for summary judgment, contending that Allstate lacked sufficient evidence to show that she misappropriated any information constituting protectable trade secrets. The district court granted Freeman summary judgment.
The court noted that Allstate “concedes that it has no evidence that Freeman [misappropriated] any information from the databases … before she lost access.” It also noted that the only evidence that Freeman retained handwritten notes containing trade secrets was the testimony of her former Allstate boss, “who admitted that she did not have personal knowledge of what Freeman had written in her notes.” Notwithstanding Allstate’s argument that it could rely on circumstantial evidence to prove Freeman’s misappropriation, the district court found that all of Freeman’s alleged misconduct amounted to “entirely normal activities for an insurance agent to engage in during the course of her work” and that “[n]o reasonable jury could infer that Freeman must have used Allstate’s confidential information” to contact any of the customers Allstate alleges it lost, “given Freeman’s undisputed personal relationship with most of them.”
On Freeman’s motion, the district court imposed Rule 11 sanctions on Allstate on the grounds that it “had no reasonable factual basis” for its misappropriation claims and instead had “relied entirely” on the testimony of witnesses “who admitted that they lacked personal knowledge” of the alleged misconduct. The court noted that the failure of Allstate, a “sophisticated and well-resourced litigant,” to “[a]t the very least … analyze[] the computers and printers that Freeman used at work to determine what she may have downloaded or printed,” “suggests that this case was a naked attempt to punish Freeman for not telling Allstate that she planned to join a competitor.”
February 2026
Deloitte Consulting LLP v. Sagitec Solutions LLC, 2026 WL 555520 (D. Del. Feb. 19, 2026)
Delaware district court holds that DTSA and New York state law apply different timeliness standards for purposes of a statute of limitations defense.
Plaintiff Deloitte sued defendant Sagitec Solutions for inter alia copyright infringement under federal law and trade secret misappropriation of certain software trade secrets under both the DTSA and New York law. In responding to Deloitte’s complaint, Sagitec did not dispute that supplemental jurisdiction existed as to Deloitte’s trade secret claims brought under New York law. Sagitec moved for summary judgment on the grounds that Deloitte’s trade secret claims were time‑barred.
The court dismissed Deloitte’s DTSA claim as untimely while allowing Deloitte’s New York trade secret claim to proceed as to equitable relief. As to the DTSA’s “discovery” standard, the court held that the statute of limitations begins running when the plaintiff has sufficient information to know of the misappropriation itself—not merely facts suggesting a need to investigate. While the district court rejected Sagitec’s argument that the clock begins to run based solely on “red flags” or suspicion, it held that Deloitte’s DTSA claim was nonetheless untimely even under Deloitte’s proposed timeliness standard given a 2018 cease-and-desist letter that accused Sagitec of having “misappropriated the trade secrets underlying Deloitte’s proprietary [software] solution” and of “continu[ing] to use Deloitte’s trade secrets to develop and deploy” a competing product. The district court concluded that because Deloitte filed suit more than three years after the letter, “Deloitte had enough information [in 2018] … to file an action for trade secret misappropriation.”
As to Deloitte’s New York trade secret claim, the court observed that under New York law, (1) trade secret claims accrue when a defendant first discloses or uses the trade secret (as opposed to when the plaintiff discovers the claimed misappropriation) and (2) the applicable statute of limitations period depends on the substantive remedy that the plaintiff seeks—a three-year limitations period applies to a claim for damages for trade secret misappropriation, while a six-year period applies to a claim for equitable relief for misappropriation.
The district court concluded that Deloitte’s complaint “primarily seeks equitable relief,” including “a preliminary and permanent injunction,” “an order requiring Sagitec to return all copies of the allegedly misappropriated Trade Secrets” and “an accounting of all ‘business opportunities received, and costs or expenses avoided.’” Accordingly, it held that while Deloitte’s request for legal relief was untimely, its requests for equitable relief under New York trade secret law were subject to the six-year limitations period and still actionable.
SS&C Techs. v. D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P., 2026 WL 322630 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 6, 2026)
New York district court rejects trade secret claims based on parallel software development and circumstantial inferences.
Plaintiff SS&C provides software services to the financial industry, including its “Geneva” software—a “portfolio accounting software product.” Defendant D.E. Shaw is a large asset manager that licensed reseller privileges for and usage access to the Geneva tool from SS&C. Later, D.E. Shaw developed its own financial services software product through a nonparty subsidiary, Arcesium. SS&C filed suit under the DTSA and New York law alleging that D.E. Shaw misappropriated trade secrets by developing, using, and licensing out to a subsidiary its product that was derived from Geneva trade secrets as part of a plan to “use its status as a Geneva reseller to lure in new customers with [SS&C’s] Geneva and then switch them to [D.E. Shaw’s platform] when it was ready.”
After the court’s earlier decision finding SS&C had adequately pleaded actionable trade secrets, D.E. Shaw moved for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c). It argued that even if protectable trade secrets existed, SS&C failed to plausibly allege misappropriation because its “improper use” allegations failed to distinguish between D.E. Shaw’s contractually permitted uses and unauthorized uses. Instead, D.E. Shaw argued, SS&C relied on “entirely conclusory” allegations that D.E. Shaw’s financial services product must be derived from Geneva trade secrets because its software “mirrored” certain data fields from or handled financial instruments similar to those handled by SS&C’s Geneva product.
The court declined to infer misappropriation from allegations that the defendant’s data warehouse “mirrored” fields and attributes for common asset classes (e.g., bonds, swaps, futures/options), describing these as “general financial terms” and inadequate “circumstantial datapoints” that made misappropriation “possible, but not plausible.” The court contrasted SS&C’s allegations with cases where plaintiffs pleaded copying of “specific features and functionality” that were “unique and the focus of confidential research and development efforts.”
The court also rejected SS&C’s misappropriation theories based on D.E. Shaw’s licensing to, and third‑party software development by, its subsidiary, Arcesium, concluding that SS&C did not plausibly tie D.E. Shaw to any alleged misappropriation by Arcesium. Specifically, it determined that SS&C’s allegations that D.E. Shaw exercised “close oversight” of Arcesium by means of “detailed review of budgets and regular updates and reports” did not suffice to establish that the alleged misappropriation would have been revealed or could be controlled through such oversight. In the court’s words, “involvement is not necessarily control,” and allegations that are merely “consistent with” misappropriation do not satisfy the DTSA’s plausibility standard.
