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 are again providing a double edition—this time covering trade secret developments from March and April 2026. For March, we cover the aftermath of a jury damages verdict that followed an appellate remand, a notable damages verdict in Texas state court, and a ruling granting summary judgment of no misappropriation primarily on the ground that the trade secrets at issue were not improperly used. For April, we cover a Federal Circuit decision reversing a jury verdict finding misappropriation and district court’s issuance of a temporary restraining order to enjoin a former employee from following through on threats of disclosing improperly retained materials to competitors.
March 2026
Syntel Sterling Best Shores Mauritius Ltd. v. TriZetto Grp., Inc., Case No. 1:15-CV-00211, 2026 WL 852567 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 27, 2026)
Following remand from Second Circuit, SDNY court upholds jury’s $170 million compensatory damages award, but significantly reduces punitive damages award from the original 2020 trial.
As Readily Ascertainable covered in July 2025, an SDNY jury found declaratory-judgment plaintiff Syntel (a healthcare software company) liable for nearly $70 million in compensatory damages resulting from its alleged trade secret misappropriation and copyright infringement. That trial was limited to compensatory damages because the Second Circuit had affirmed Syntel’s liability but vacated the damages award on the grounds that the DTSA prohibits awarding unjust enrichment damages based on the costs the alleged misappropriator avoided by using the trade secrets. In March 2026, the district court resolved the parties’ post-trial motions by upholding the retrial jury’s compensatory damages award but significantly reducing the original 2020 jury’s $285 million punitive damages award.
As to compensatory damages, the court concluded that the retrial jury “plainly considered the weight of the evidence.” The court also rejected Syntel’s argument that the retrial violated the Second Circuit’s mandate from the original appeal, holding that the Second Circuit’s ruling had left open the possibility that TriZetto could establish damages under theories other than DTSA unjust enrichment—including lost profits damages under New York law.
The court also reconsidered the original 2020 punitive damages award, which it held was governed by New York law. The district court first concluded that the Second Circuit’s decision neither vacated the original award of $285 million (Syntel’s position) nor prohibited the district court from modifying it on remand (TriZetto’s position). Next, the court applied New York law and the Supreme Court’s Gore guideposts in concluding that the original award should be reduced to $140 million—a 2:1 punitive to compensatory damages ratio. While the district court found that it was not bound to cap the damages award at that ratio (because the award was not rooted in the DTSA, which sets a 2:1 maximum), it found the DSTA’s punitive damages provision to be relevant to the Gore analysis because it suggested that “Congress had judged that a 2:1 ratio is within the permissible range of penalties for trade secret misappropriation.”
HouseCanary Inc. v. Amrock LLC, No. 2016-CI-406300 (438th Judicial District Tex. Mar. 6, 2026)
Jury awards real estate analytics firm $175 million in retrial of previously vacated $706 million award.
In 2016, Amrock (a title company) sued HouseCanary (a real estate firm) for allegedly breaching an agreement to share appraisal data and automated evaluation models. HouseCanary countersued with inter alia trade secret claims under Texas law, alleging that Amrock improperly used HouseCanary’s software to misappropriate HouseCanary trade secrets—specifically, HouseCanary’s automated valuation model formulas that generate reports about home values and comparable sales. HouseCanary ultimately won a $706 million verdict in 2018.
That verdict was overturned on appeal in June 2020, due to an improper jury instruction. Specifically, a state appellate court held that the jury that been instructed on several theories of misappropriation that were not supported by legally sufficient evidence (e.g., that the jury could not, as a matter of law, find that the alleged trade secrets had been misappropriated using “bribery,” “espionage,” or “breach or inducement of a breach to maintain secrecy”). In March 2026, a San Antonio jury awarded $175 million on HouseCanary’s trade secret claims following a retrial. Amrock has indicated it will appeal the verdict.
Amyndas Pharmaceuticals v. Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., No. 20-12254-LTS, 2026 WL 1458366 (D. Mass. Mar. 30, 2026)
Massachusetts district court grants summary judgment in favor of defendant after plaintiff fails to establish actual use of the alleged trade secrets
Amyndas, a biotechnology startup company, brought trade secret claims against Alexion under federal and Massachusetts law. Amyndas alleged that the two companies had entered into a business relationship under a confidentiality agreement, but that Alexion later used thirteen of Amyndas’s trade secrets disclosed under that agreement to directly compete with Amyndas in selling medication to treat gum disease.
The district court granted summary judgment, holding that Amyndas failed to present evidence from which a reasonable jury could find use, or any other form of misappropriation, of any alleged trade secret. Among other things, the district court noted that to the extent Alexion used Amyndas’s trade secrets in a manner expressly permitted by the parties’ NDA (e.g., in exploring certain business or R&D arrangements), such use was not misappropriation because it was done with Amyndas’s consent. The court also rejected Amyndas’s argument that Alexion’s pivot to sell products in the gum-disease treatment field after learning of Amyndas’s trade secrets was at least circumstantial evidence of improper use. The court described this argument as both unduly speculative and contradicted by undisputed evidence, including evidence showing that Alexion had taken steps to enter the field even before it received Amyndas’s trade secrets.
April 2026
Int’l Med. Devices, Inc. v. Cornell, 174 F.4th 64 (Fed. Cir. 2026)
Federal Circuit reverses $18.3 million trade secret verdict, holding that the alleged trade secrets were already publicly disclosed or generally known.
Plaintiff International Medical Devices (“IMD”) and others brought suit against a group of defendants (including Dr. Robert Cornell) under inter alia California trade secret law, on the theory that Dr. Cornell and others had misappropriated certain trade secrets related to IMD’s cosmetic penile implant technology after Dr. Cornell attended a surgical training session protected by a non-disclosure agreement. IMD’s suit focused on three specific design features of the implant and an allegedly proprietary list of surgical instruments and materials. While a jury awarded IMD $18.3 million, the Federal Circuit reversed on the grounds that the verdict was not supported by substantial evidence.
Specifically, the Federal Circuit explained that no reasonable jury could have found that the alleged design features secrets—related to internal cavities, mesh tabs, and absorbable sutures—were not generally known because the gist of each secret was disclosed in a patent. The Court further explained that IMD’s adaption of the known concepts in one context (e.g., use in a therapeutic implant) to the context of cosmetic implants was insufficient to establish that the information qualified as a trade secret where “both environments present the same problem that is solved by the same solution.” Finally, the Court held that IMD had failed to establish that the instruments and materials list had independent economic value from being kept secret, as the list had been disclosed to Dr. Cornell and a third-party company without any explicit confidentiality markings.
Oracle America, Inc., et al, v. Pravin Kelkar, No. 5:26-CV-00236-BO (E.D.N.C. Apr. 13, 2026), Dkt. 8 (Motion), Dkt. 21 (Order)
A North Carolina federal district court grants a temporary restraining order for Oracle, barring a former employee from disclosing trade secrets.
Plaintiff Oracle filed suit against defendant Pravin Kelkar—a former employee—asserting claims under federal trade secret law and for breach of contract. Oracle also moved for a TRO, on the grounds that Mr. Kelkar had (after losing his job) threatened to sell trade secrets from Oracle’s proprietary “install base” database to the “highest bidder” unless the company gave him, inter alia, a sum amounting to “full base salary and benefits for 2 years.” The district court granted Oracle’s motion three days later in a two-page ruling that found Oracle had a reasonable likelihood of success on at least one of its claims and that the public interest in protecting trade secrets weighed in favor of the TRO.
