We at Tangibly prefer reading trade secret cases over patent cases. Trade secrets usually involve a lot of drama – ex-employees taking crown jewels to a competitor, M&A buyers taking the due diligence information and starting their own competing business, and so on. It’s usually an entertaining story with a clear “good guy” and “bad guy.”
The less exciting part is procedural. For lawyers, we (painfully) remember Civil Procedure class as a 1L in law school. Great cases are sometimes lost due to procedural issues or mistakes.
Here’s a very recent case…
In 2023 Fox Rothschild client Beta Pharma sued the law firm and a partner in New Jersey federal district court for violation of DTSA as well as a large number of state claims. Beta claimed that the partner disclosed trade secrets to another client who filed a competing patent application. Beta took great efforts to keep the information on its new drug confidential and had signed an engagement letter with the law firm.
In an opinion just last week, the court found that Beta waited too long to file the lawsuit, and did not meet the three-year statute of limitations under DTSA. They knew or should have known about what happened long before 2020.
Since there were no other federal claims to maintain subject matter jurisdiction, the court dismissed the entire case against the law firm and partner.
As my Civil Procedure professor Bob Ragazzo famously said, “Procedure is everything, substance is nothing.” An exaggeration perhaps, but often true.
Further Reading: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/drug-maker-sued-rival-lawyer-over-secrets-too-late-court-says