Litigation

Trade Secrets

Gibson Dunn’s Trade Secrets practice is a cornerstone of the firm’s IP services, providing clients with robust protection and strategic advice.

Overview
Experience

Overview

The firm’s combination of litigation prowess, advisory expertise and global reach make it a go-to for businesses looking to safeguard their valuable trade secrets.

Trade secret litigation is skyrocketing, as are the stakes for litigants. Gibson Dunn’s trade secret litigation practice group is poised to quickly and deftly assist our clients in prosecuting or defending against trade secret allegations and claims, including in high-stakes trials and appeals.

Our deep bench of litigators draws upon our intellectual property, labor and employment, commercial litigation, and other practices to provide an approach tailored to the technology and business of each client, and each case. Trade secret cases often involve expedited injunctive relief. Our experienced team is able to quickly mobilize teams to get up to the speed on the clients’ technology to develop an overall strategy to accomplish our clients’ objectives.

We have litigated a broad range of trade secret disputes, and have won major victories for our clients in federal and state courts and in arbitration. We provide comprehensive representation from the pre-suit phase, to trial, and through appeal, leveraging our sophisticated appellate practice to protect our clients’ success at the trial level. As a result of our success and client-focused approach, the group, as well as many trade secret litigators individually, are regularly recognized as industry leaders in top legal publications, including Law360, Benchmark Litigation, Chambers USA, The Legal 500, The Daily Journal. Recent recognitions include Intellectual Property Group of the Year by Law360, numerous other regional and nationwide recognitions of our group and lawyers.

Our leading labor and employment attorneys routinely investigate, pursue, and defend allegations of trade secret misappropriation from high-level executives and employees with special skills, quickly mobilizing to protect our clients’ most valuable intangible assets. The firm’s lawyers have collectively investigated, prosecuted, or defended hundreds of such allegations. We also advise our clients on bringing related claims—including breach of fiduciary duty claims—in addition to or instead of trade secret claims.

Trade secret claims have also become one of the most powerful tools in business litigation between competitors or other parties to complex commercial disputes—especially in the technology and services industries. Our lawyers routinely and successfully both defend against and bring trade secret claims or counterclaims on behalf of our clients—either alone or in conjunction with other business claims like breach of contract and fraud. And our intellectual property group has deep experience trying and winning trade secret claims related to hardware or software design in conjunction with or in lieu of patent claims.

Experience

Recent representations include:

American Multinational Technology Company: Achieved multiple court victories culminating in a favorable settlement in a trade secrets case against a former engineer who left the company and improperly created a competing business featuring closely related technologies which breached both the engineer’s contracts and their duty of loyalty to the company.
HSBC: Secured an order dramatically narrowing a $1 billion lawsuit against HSBC and individuals arising out of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Guardant Health: Represented Guardant Health in a trade secret and ownership dispute with Illumina over dozens of patents directed to next generation sequencing methods, succeeding in dismissing nearly all claims on a motion to dismiss, that was quickly followed by a favorable settlement.
Amrock: Obtained reversal of a $740 million trade secrets misappropriation verdict for leading title insurance provider and successfully preserved that victory in the Texas Supreme Court.
DraftKings: Obtained a sweeping injunction win on behalf of DraftKings to ensure that the company’s non-compete, non-solicit, and non-disclosure agreements with a key former executive remained in force and its trade secrets were not misappropriated after the executive went to a competitor.
Kimberly-Clark: Defended Kimberly-Clark against claims of breach of contract, fraud, and trade secrets misappropriation brought by ACI, a former supplier to Kimberly-Clark of face masks and respirators. ACI alleged, among other things, that Kimberly-Clark misappropriated ACI’s trade secrets by its manufacture of certain face masks and respirators. The case was dismissed pursuant to settlement by the parties.
Oath Holdings: Won a complete dismissal of trade secret misappropriation and related claims against Oath Holdings Inc., a direct subsidiary of Verizon Communications Inc. In so doing, Gibson Dunn obtained a novel holding that an implied contract of confidentiality does not constitute a reasonable measure to protect a trade secret. The district court denied with prejudice the plaintiff’s bid to amend its claims, and closed the case (after the plaintiff filed a notice of appeal, the parties settled the matter on confidential terms).
Archer Aviation: Represented Archer Aviation in a high-profile patent and trade secret litigation against Wisk Aero. Defeated a motion for a preliminary injunction, won significant pretrial motions, and secured a favorable settlement for Archer.
SoundCloud: Obtained dismissal with prejudice of a trade secrets misappropriation action brought by Beatport against SoundCloud Limited and SoundCloud Inc. concerning online music streaming platforms.
Nike: Represented Nike, Inc. in trade secret misappropriation case concerning three designers leaving Nike for high-profile competitor. Secured confidential settlement after winning temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.