Welcome to the September edition of Debevoise’s Trade Secrets Spotlight, our monthly newsletter highlighting three significant developments in trade secret law. Each issue will distill decisions of practical importance to companies navigating trade secret issues and disputes. Please contact any member of our trade secrets team with questions.

1. Twin Rivers Paper Co. v. Complete Paper Inc.—The Eastern District of Wisconsin holds that improper acquisition alone is sufficient to allege misappropriation.

Twin Rivers, a Wisconsin paper company, sued its competitor BiOrigin and two former Twin Rivers employees alleging that days after joining BiOrigin, Rachel Van Wychen downloaded Twin Rivers’ pricing data and edited a file on a key customer. Her former subordinate, Kim Gerrits, allegedly downloaded pricing and customer files to USB drives before leaving. Weeks later, the customer cut back on purchases from Twin Rivers, citing lower pricing from BiOrigin and another competitor.

Gerrits moved to dismiss the trade secret claims, arguing that Twin Rivers “allege[d] merely that she downloaded files containing trade secrets”—not that she actually used them. She relied on the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in Next Payment Solutions v. CLEAResult Consulting. The district court rejected her argument. It reasoned that Next Payment addressed a misuse theory at summary judgment and “did not make misuse the exclusive means of misappropriation under the DTSA.”

The court also sustained the claim against BiOrigin on a respondeat superior theory, reasoning that “[p]laintiffs need only plead facts, not legal theories.” Van Wychen accessed a competitor’s customer pricing while serving as BiOrigin’s Chief Commercial Officer and while that customer was soliciting bids from both companies. The court held that those allegations plausibly showed that BiOrigin “used, rather than merely possessed,” the trade secrets.

This decision adds to the growing and often conflicting body of case law on mere possession and vicarious liability.

2. Puris, LLC v. CMG Pipelines, Inc.—Eleventh Circuit upholds a preliminary injunction against former founder and third party.

Plaintiff-appellee Puris purchased Murphy Pipeline Contractors, a company specializing in repairing pipelines with proprietary “trenchless” technology, from its founder, Andrew Mayer, in 2020. As part of the sale, Mayer stayed on as Murphy’s president and agreed to a non-compete that applied to any area within 50 miles of “company locations.” Shortly after the sale, Mayer allegedly agreed to become a “silent partner” in defendant-appellant CMG Pipelines to grow its business at the expense of Murphy. At the time, CMG Pipelines was a local Louisiana business without experience in “trenchless” pipeline repair. Over the next several years, however, Mayer allegedly steered subcontracting opportunities from Murphy to CMG, assisted CMG with obtaining an exclusive license to a technology almost identical to Murphy’s proprietary technology and poached nearly 30 former Murphy employees for CMG.

After discovering the scheme in 2025, Puris sued Mayer, who then stipulated to a preliminary injunction barring him from trenchless work within 50 miles of 553 locations that Puris had identified in a sworn declaration. Puris then added CMG as a party and moved for a similar injunction based on tortious interference. The district court entered an injunction that mirrored the one against Mayer but exempted projects on which CMG had already substantially completed the work, reasoning that damages could likely address the harm arising from completed and ongoing projects. CMG appealed, arguing that there was insufficient evidence of irreparable harm and that the injunction was overbroad because it borrowed the territorial scope from a non-compete that CMG never signed.

The Eleventh Circuit rejected both arguments in an unpublished decision. On irreparable harm, the court explained that while “lost profits on a contract might be calculable . . . broader losses—such as poached employees, reputational damage, weakened competitive position—are ‘far more difficult (if not impossible)’ to measure.” The court observed that the injunction barred CMG from bidding on projects drawn from Murphy’s confidential pipeline and from using Murphy’s former employees to pursue its customers. On scope, the court rejected CMG’s reading of “Company locations” as beside the point. The court went on to hold that the district court permissibly used Mayer’s stipulated injunction as a “starting point” in deciding “what relief was necessary to prevent the CMG Parties’ conduct from continuing.” Because Mayer had nationwide responsibility for Murphy’s work, and CMG offered no evidence that any listed location fell outside that responsibility, the 553-location territory had a sound basis in the record.

Although unpublished, this decision is a reminder of the potential impact of non-compete agreements on non-signatories.

United Electric alleged that its former vice president, while still employed, texted confidential pricing and rate information to the owner of competitor Kent Power before he was terminated. The district court found that United Electric was likely to succeed on its DTSA and Kentucky trade secret claims and entered a preliminary injunction requiring, among other things, that Kent Power cease performing work for a United Electric client. The district court also directed that “an independent forensic examiner . . . image, preserve, and search all [of the Defendants’] relevant data sources,” which included “computers, external drives, mobile phones, and cloud accounts,” so that the forensic examiners could identify and retrieve “United Electric-generated data.”

The Sixth Circuit vacated the injunction. As to the client contract, the court held that United Electric had not established irreparable harm because, among other things, the contract involved transmission work that United Electric could not perform. The court also rejected the district court’s finding of irreparable injury resulting from “downstream effects” of Kent Power’s contract with the client as too speculative because “nothing in the record shows with any certainty that Kent Power poses a competitive threat to United Electric’s relationship” with the client. For example, every attempt in the past by Kent Power to obtain distribution services with the client has been unsuccessful, and although Kent Power attempted to enter the Louisville market where United Electric operated, “nothing in the record shows that United Electric has suffered any loss of business in Louisville.”

Separately, the court held that the forensic examination provisions were overbroad. The injunction order authorized imaging of computers, phones, external drives and cloud accounts without limiting the examination to specific “custodians, devices, and information,” and it did not “define what information is relevant or ‘responsive.’” The court reasoned that such a broad order could enable the forensic examiners to “gain access to the Defendants’ trade secrets,” “which is expressly renounced by the DTSA.” The court further held that an agreement “in principle” among the parties and forensic examiners did not cure those deficiencies because it was neither incorporated into the court’s order nor “necessarily binding.” Consequently, the court held that the district court “failed to provide protections for the Defendants’ confidential, privileged, and private information, making its order overbroad.”

The decision underscores the importance of specificity in injunctions and forensic examination orders.

This publication is for general information purposes only. It is not intended to provide, nor is it to be used as, a substitute for legal advice. In some jurisdictions it may be considered attorney advertising.