Beyond State Law: The Ninth Circuit's New Framework for DTSA Trade Secret Identification

Trade secret litigation creates a paradox at the pleading stage: plaintiffs must describe alleged trade secrets specifically enough to survive motions to dismiss while avoiding public disclosures that could destroy secret protection. The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) provides no explicit identification guidance. Only California and Massachusetts have state statutes addressing trade secret identification under their versions of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Federal courts in those jurisdictions have historically looked to state discovery rules for pleading guidance. The Ninth Circuit's Quintara decision held that California's UTSA does not bind federal DTSA claims, requiring only "sufficient particularity" pre-discovery. Courts will need new frameworks to balance confidentiality and defendants' due process rights.

Trade secret litigation presents a fundamental paradox at the pleading stage: on the one hand, a plaintiff must identify their allegedly misappropriated trade secrets with sufficient specificity to survive a motion to dismiss, without providing an overly detailed disclosure in the public complaint that could effectively destroy the trade secret's protected status, undermining the very foundation of the claim, while also describing the trade secrets sufficiently to provide defendants with adequate notice to mount a defense and ensure compliance with required pleading standards.

Accordingly, plaintiffs in California asserting only DTSA misappropriation claims before discovery are required only to identify their trade secret with "sufficient particularity" to separate them from matters of general knowledge in the trade or of special knowledge of those persons skilled in the trade, and rather than meeting the more stringent "reasonable particularity" standard under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 2019.210.

[After Quintara], courts will need to develop new frameworks for managing the 'delicate problem' of trade secret discovery while balancing legitimate protection needs against defendants' due process rights.

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