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 cover decisions relating to when the DTSA statute of limitations begins to run, the availability of certain unjust enrichment and reasonable royalty damages remedies, whether and to what extent compilations may qualify as trade secrets, and the preclusive scope of California’s trade secrets statute.
May 2026
Insulet Corp., v. EOFlow, Co. Ltd., No. 205-1807, _ F.4th _, 2026 WL 1502238 (Fed. Cir. May 28, 2026)
A divided Federal Circuit overturns $59.4 million judgment based on statute of limitations.
As previously reported, Insulet (a medical-device manufacturer) brought suit under the DTSA, alleging that former Insulet employees misappropriated proprietary information to develop a competing insulin patch pump. In 2024, a jury found that EOFlow misappropriated four of Insulet’s trade secrets and awarded $452 million in damages, which the district court reduced to $59.4 million after denying EOFlow’s posttrial motion on the statute of limitations.
EOFlow appealed, and a split Federal Circuit reversed, holding that EOFlow was entitled to judgment as a matter of law because the statute of limitations expired before Insulet brought suit. Specifically, the majority held that knowledge of facts demonstrating (1) the defendant’s access to the alleged trade secrets and (2) and similarity of the trade secret to the defendant’s design are sufficient to plead a trade secret misappropriation claim, and thus rejected Insulet’s argument that the period only begins to run when the plaintiff has acquired detailed and specific knowledge of the misappropriation. The majority relatedly held that—based on the DTSA provision stating that “a continuing misappropriation constitutes a single claim of misappropriation”—discovery of misappropriation as to one trade secret starts the clock for all related trade secrets disclosed in the same course of conduct.
In dissent, Judge Prost primarily criticized the majority opinion on the grounds that it conflated the statutorily required “discovery” standard (i.e., the clock starts when a reasonably diligent person discovered or should have discovered the misappropriation) with the easier-to-satisfy “inquiry notice” standard (i.e., the clock starts when a reasonably diligent person would have begun to investigate). Judge Prost also opined that had the majority opinion applied the proper standard, (1) the jury’s finding that the statute of limitations had not run was supported by substantial evidence and (2) the Court would not have had to reach the “first impression” question of whether the statute of limitations begins to run for all related trade secrets once the clock starts for even one of those alleged secrets.
Versata Software, LLC v. Ford Motor Co., No. 2024-1140, _ F.4th _, 2026 WL 1449851 (Fed. Cir. May 22, 2026)
Federal Circuit reverses Michigan district court’s reduction of damages.
Following the expiration of the parties’ software licensing agreement, Ford Motor Company developed its own vehicle manufacturing configuration software and sought a declaratory judgment that it had not misappropriated trade secrets from Versata Software, LLC. Versata filed counterclaims against Ford, alleging trade secret misappropriation. During pre-trial proceedings, the district court limited Versata’s recovery of damages to a reasonable royalty based on its licensing history with Ford—expressly barring Versata from seeking unjust enrichment damages and certain related reasonable royalty theories. In 2022, a jury awarded Versata $22.38 million for Ford’s misappropriation of three trade secrets. The district court, however, reduced the damages to $0 on the grounds that the jury could not reliably determine how long it would have taken Ford to independently develop the misappropriated trade secrets.
The Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s original pre-trial rulings and held that Versata was entitled to seek unjust enrichment damages under both the DTSA and state law. The court concluded that the district court’s categorical preclusion of unjust enrichment damages was “misplaced” because the plain language of both the DTSA and Michigan law “expressly allows complainants to pursue unjust enrichment damages for trade secret misappropriation.” The court remanded for a new trial on damages for trade secret misappropriation under an unjust enrichment theory and instructed the district court to reconsider Versata’s reasonable-royalty models it previously excluded.
Relation Ins., Inc. v. Pilot Risk Mgmt. Consulting, LLC, No. 68A25, _ S.E.2d _, 2026 WL 1459402 (N.C. May 22, 2026)
Supreme Court of North Carolina reverses grant of summary judgment, emphasizing compilations of publicly available information may qualify as trade secrets.
Relation Insurance Services of North Carolina (an intermediary between insurance carriers and policyholders) sued Pilot Risk Management Consulting, LLC for trade secret misappropriation under both the DTSA and state law. Relation alleged that former employees misappropriated numerous trade secrets, including customer and client renewal lists, when they left Relation to form Pilot. Summary judgment was granted to the defendants on the grounds that neither the customer list nor the client renewal list qualified as trade secrets because both were spreadsheets containing only the names of the clients and limited additional information, which the lower court found was not sufficient to warrant trade secret protection.
The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed, holding that there are genuine issues of material fact as to whether the customer and client renewal lists constitute trade secrets. The Court emphasized that whether information qualifies as a trade secret is a case-specific, factual determination and that the lower court had erred by concluding client lists were “not the type of compilation that is deserving of trade secret protection” without properly considering the underlying facts (e.g., the extent to which the information is known outside the business, the value of the information to both the business and its competitors, and the amount expended to develop the information). For similar reasons, the Court rejected Pilot’s assertion that the fact that individual clients’ contact information was available online precluded trade secret protection. Instead, the Court noted that the relevant inquiry was whether the compilation of client information as a whole was publicly available or could have been easily compiled from public listings.
The Court also ruled on two other notable trade secret issues. First, the Court made clear that even if Relation could establish that Pilot possessed Relation’s trade secrets, mere possession is insufficient to establish a prima facie claim of misappropriation. Rather, Relation would also be required to prove Pilot acquired, had a specific opportunity to acquire, or used the trade secrets without consent or authority. Second, and relatedly, the Court interpreted North Carolina law to hold that an employer cannot state a prima facie case for misappropriation against an employee simply by showing that the employer gave the employee access to its trade secrets at some point.
Guild Mortg. Co. LLC v. CrossCountry Mortg. LLC, No. D085036, _ Cal. Rptr. 3d _, 2026 WL 1505950 (Cal. Ct. App. May 27, 2026)
California Court of Appeal holds trade secret claims under California law do not preempt tortious interference claims or claims under California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.
Guild Mortgage Company LLC (a nationwide residential mortgage lender) sued rival CrossCountry Mortgage Company LLC for violations of the Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (“CCDAFA”) and for interference with contract, intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage (the “interference claims”). The trial court held that those claims were preempted by the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act because they could have been—but were not—brought as trade secret claims.
The Court of Appeal reversed. With respect to the CCDAFA claims, the court held that California trade secret law does not displace civil claims based on the CCDAFA. Acknowledging that federal courts in California are split on the issue, the court explained that each statute targets distinct predatory conduct: CCDAFA targets storage and manipulation of electronic data, whereas the trade secret law is geared toward protecting intellectual property. The court further reasoned that holding that California trade secret law displaces the CCDAFA displacement would be illogical given the California legislature’s repeated expansion of civil protection under the CCDAFA.
As to Guild’s interference claims, the Court held that Guild had sufficiently pleaded “a coordinated scheme . . . to sabotage a Guild branch office” involving conduct, such as recruiting Guild employees to move to CrossCountry, resulting in the loss of Guild’s entire Kirkland branch and most if not all of its employees. Because the Court concluded that this conduct went beyond the mere taking of Guild’s confidential information, the Court held that Guild’s interference claims principally arose from conduct without a connection to trade secret law.
AbbVie Inc. v. BeiGene, Ltd., No. 24-cv-8167, 2026 WL 1296104 (N.D. Ill. May 12, 2026)
Illinois district court denies motion to dismiss DTSA claims.
AbbVie Inc. brought suit under the DTSA against BeiGene, Ltd. for misappropriating trade secrets relating to “a chemical compound (known as the BTK degrader program) that AbbVie is developing as a cancer therapy.” AbbVie alleged that BeiGene lured a former AbbVie senior research scientist, Dr. Huaqing Liu, to BeiGene in order to gain access to the relevant trade secrets. BeiGene (unsuccessfully) moved to dismiss on multiple grounds.
The district court first rejected BeiGene’s argument that AbbVie’s alleged trade secrets were disclosed in a patent application filed by BeiGene prior to hiring Dr. Liu. The court noted that although some portions of the chemical compounds comprising the trade secrets appeared in the patent application, the vast majority did not and the portions of the chemical compounds that were disclosed included some additional structures that distinguished them from AbbVie’s claimed secrets.
The district court next rejected BeiGene’s argument that AbbVie had failed to take reasonable measures to protect the secrecy of its purported trade secrets, concluding it was “immaterial” that AbbVie applied the same confidentiality policy to the trade secrets at issue as it did to other confidential information that AbbVie did not claim as a trade secret. And on misappropriation, the district court concluded that AbbVie’s complaint sufficiently alleged misconduct by pointing to circumstantial evidence—i.e., Dr. Liu’s access to key information while employed at AbbVie, the “suspicious circumstances” regarding Dr. Liu’s departure (“including resigning from AbbVie and then almost immediately taking a similar position at a different company”), and the “rapid timeline between Dr. Liu joining BeiGene and defendants’ subsequent publication of patent applications misappropriating AbbVie’s trade secrets.”
Finally, the district court rejected BeiGene’s argument that AbbVie had failed to identify the alleged trade secrets with the requisite specificity. The court noted that DTSA claims are not subject to a heightened pleading standard and that AbbVie had provided details that were sufficiently specific to put defendants on notice at the pleading stage—for example, by identifying specific elements of the BTK degrader program that AbbVie “allege[d] contribute[d] to the degraders’ unique pharmacological properties.”
