4 Key Takeaways | Trade Secret Update 2024 Legal Developments and Trends
The takeaway from DDR Weinert, Limited et al v. Ovintiv USA Inc. is that equitable recoupment rescued a royalty payor from its mistaken payment of royalties. But first, The events. The Richters were mineral lessors...more
On October 22, 2014, a class action lawsuit was filed by over 60,000 detainees of GEO Group’s Processing Immigration Center against GEO Group Inc. for violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and unjustly enriching...more
Following a recent trend to reduce large damages awards in trade secret misappropriation cases, a federal judge in Massachusetts cut Insulet Corp.’s damages award from $452 million to $59.4 million to avoid impermissible...more
On March 10, 2025, a Minnesota state court judge granted in part and denied in part a credit union’s motion for summary judgment—and granted the defendants’ motion for leave to assert counterclaims against the credit union—in...more
Under Van Dyke, deeds with double-fraction royalty reservations referencing “1/8” are presumed to reserve a floating royalty interest unless clearly contradicted. Defenses like waiver, ratification, and limitations cannot...more
In Perlaki v. J.B. Poindexter & Co., Inc., a data breach class action, Magistrate Judge Andrew M. Edison of the Southern District of Texas found that the plaintiff had standing to sue under Article III of the United States...more
Ed. Note: This is the fourth in a series of articles taken from Gavin Parsons' CLE presentation for the North Carolina Bar Association's Antitrust and Complex Business Dispute CLE Program presented on Thursday, January 30,...more
Takeaway: Unjust enrichment is one of the most commonly asserted causes of action in class actions seeking compensatory damages. Equitable considerations form the foundation of unjust enrichment claims under the laws of...more
Singapore-based XP Power has been ordered to pay $17 million in attorneys’ fees to opponent Comet Technologies, USA, following Comet’s victory at trial. The Northern District of California issued the order in January 2025,...more
Examining the issue of trade secret misappropriation when parties have contractually limited their liability from breach, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of the case,...more
H&P, an investment bank, provided services allegedly worth USD 18 million to Randgold, who H&P had assumed was a client. However, terms of their engagement were never formalised or even written down. After the transaction,...more
On April 4, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama’s ruling dismissing Alabama Aircraft Industries’ (“AAI”) trade secret misappropriation claim against Boeing, thereby...more
A federal court in California recently granted a manufacturer’s motion to dismiss a distributor’s oral contract claims, but declined to dismiss claims for promissory estoppel and unjust enrichment. Cosmonova, LLC v. BioFilm,...more
The US District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Manalapan Surgery Ctr., et al. v. 1199 SEIU National Benefit Fund, No. 23-CV-03525 (EDNY March 12, 2025), recently granted a motion to dismiss a complaint filed by...more
In a recent post about legal issues with the social casino sweepstakes model, we indicated that a recent RICO lawsuit against a social casino sweepstakes model, which also named Apple and Google, was dismissed voluntarily by...more
A federal court recently rejected arguments by MultiPlan, Inc. and Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company that they had no obligation to ensure payments at the contractually negotiated, in-network rate to Anatomic and...more
Boren Descendants et al v. Fasken Oil and Ranch, LTD, offers something to talk about beyond interpretation of the fixed-or-floating NPRI question. At issue was this reservation, expressed as a double fraction, in a 1933...more
In Dewberry Group, Inc. v. Dewberry Engineers, Inc., the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Lanham Act does not permit courts to disregard corporate identity when awarding damages for trademark infringement....more
The English Court of Appeal has ruled that the English courts have jurisdiction to hear a claim brought by a group of migrant workers against three companies in the Dyson group alleging trafficking and abuses of their labour...more
In 2021, LKQ Corporation (LKQ) filed suit against Robert Rutledge, its former plant manager, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. LKQ alleged that Rutledge’s working for a competitor within nine...more
Takeaway: A civil RICO claim – especially one framed as a putative class action – can be a powerful cause of action, given the civil remedies for RICO violations, which include treble damages and mandatory fee-shifting. ...more
The question of how much diligence buyers must demonstrate may be considered in a new authenticity case brought recently in the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court against a Miami gallery for selling $6 million in fake Andy...more
For the second time, a New York federal district judge denied a motion for class certification filed by caustic soda purchasers, ruling that the plaintiffs had failed to meet the predominance requirement under Federal Rule of...more
Assume the deceased settlor of a trust had intended that his niece be included in the beneficiary class, but his estate-planning attorney had negligently made no provision for her in the governing instrument. After settlor’s...more
The AirBoss saga continues… This holiday season, AirBoss Flexible Products Co. received a monumental legal victory, righting a costly wrong in MSSC, Inc. v. AirBoss. The Court awarded AirBoss nearly $3.5 million in damages,...more