合理措施播客

Case Law Review and Trade Secret Legislation in India

The podcast dives into a case law review of Plintron Technologies USA versus former executives, discussing the legal hurdles of obtaining a temporary restraining order (TRO). Chris explains the procedural challenges involved in the case, particularly around the need to demonstrate a high likelihood of success and irreparable harm. The case centers on a laptop containing both personal and business data, highlighting the risks associated with mixing personal and work-related information. The hosts explore the legal nuances and emphasize the importance of procedure in litigation.

Shifting gears, the conversation turns to Chris’s recent trip to India, where he visited Wipro and gave seminars at law schools. During his visit, students repeatedly asked when India would implement its own trade secret statute. Currently, India lacks specific trade secret protection laws, requiring individuals to rely on a patchwork of other legal provisions. However, shortly after Chris’s visit, the Law Commission of India issued a report advocating for a dedicated trade secret statute, signaling progress in the country’s legal framework. The hosts discuss the growing local demand for better trade secret protection in India and China, driven by domestic companies rather than foreign multinationals, and how trade secret laws are evolving globally to meet the needs of local businesses.

收获：

• Due to a lack of trade secret statute in India, individuals must rely on other legal
  provisions to handle trade secret theft.
• Countries like China and India are seeing increased local pressure for better trade secret
  protection, driven by domestic companies rather than foreign multinationals.
• Trade secret laws and procedures are evolving globally, with different jurisdictions
  shaping their laws in response to the needs of local businesses.

Transcript:

Chris (00:00.171):
Countdown.

Tim Londergan (00:01.966):
Okay, this is the countdown. So I think first and foremost, Chris, we need to figure out a name for this blog. Actually, is it a blog? It’s a blog. Podcast, actually, yeah, podcast. We’re gonna call it a podcast. Got any good names for this thing? It can’t have the words “trade secret” in it.

Chris (00:29.007):
Tangible Podcast. Make it tangible. Reasonably tangible.

Tim Londergan (00:32.97):
The Tangible Podcast. Make it tangible.

Tim Londergan (00:42.786):
Uh, okay. Uh, it sounds like… Oh, there you go. Keep it reasonable. Uh, that’s interesting. Um, maybe it’s, uh, it’s also worth bringing some marketing resources into this, uh, this process.

Chris (00:42.882):
Kind of riff on the whole reasonable measures. Reasonable measures podcast. You get there. Keep it reasonable. Be reasonable.

Chris (00:58.998):
Yes, smarter people than us.

Chris (01:04.351):
It’s not hard.

Tim Londergan (01:04.586):
Certainly than me. Okay, so look, the reason why I wanted to take a stab at doing these sort of short form podcasts, everybody does long form, I want to do short form. And some of this sort of is a result of our, you know, now, what is it, 12 years of knowing each other and working together in one form or another.

And for me, it’s always been really interesting to be able to sort of ask you any really stupid question when it comes to IP and have you be very patient and give me an answer. And so I thought there’s so much unknown and misunderstanding around this whole trade secret space. I thought it would be super fun to launch something that’s also a little bit educational, but you know, again, keep it a little bit fun and sort of topical.

So the thought here is to do one case law review and then sort of chat about some stuff going on in the market sort of currently. So anyway, nice work today on the IHC webinar with Nicole at DLA, that was really cool.

And so, OK, with that, let’s jump in to our case. Today’s case is a decision from the US District Court, Seattle, February 12, 2024, so very recent. Plintron Technologies USA versus a whole handful of people as the defendants. These are former executives. And I think part of today’s case is… A sort of theme is all roads lead to India. You just back from India a few weeks ago, which we’ll talk about, but Plintron Technologies USA LLC is the U.S. subsidiary of an Indian-based technology company. I think they do some sort of telecom-related something or other. And so I was sort of drawn to this case for a few reasons, not the least of which was this idea of establishing likelihood of success in a case. And then the deeper you go into the case, the more silly it gets and interesting. And so maybe as the setup, maybe you could just kind of give us a little bit of an overview of the case, talk about this likelihood of success sort of hurdle or threshold, and then we’ll kind of dig into a few of the details.

Chris (04:08.102):
Sure, Tim. That’s a great intro. And this case is actually still ongoing. So it’s very much still in flight. And what the court was deciding was just the plaintiff’s request for a temporary restraining order. So it’s one very narrow question, and it’s very much a procedural issue. And it reminds me of law school. My very first class and very first professor was famous or infamous for saying that procedure is everything and substance is nothing. And he had a very strong view that everyone got excited about the substance of litigation, but it’s actually procedure and doing procedure correctly that ultimately wins the day.

And this is a good example here where there were a bunch of executives who either left the company or were terminated. It’s not entirely clear who was let go and who left of their own. But there’s a question around basically a laptop computer that one of the executives wanted some personal information to be deleted from the laptop before returning the laptop to the ex-employer because it was a company laptop, not his personal one. So, I could speculate as to what’s on the laptop, and you could be really creative in coming up with wild ideas of what’s so important on that laptop, but the court doesn’t really say here. But a temporary restraining order is actually really hard to get. You have to jump through a lot of hoops and satisfy the cold winter factors. It’s not the time of year, it’s actually named after a guy who was secretary of the Navy in another lawsuit. But it’s really, really hard to get a temporary restraining order. You need to be in a position of having a very high likelihood of success at the litigation. And especially, you need to be able to show irreparable harm or irreparable injury. Basically, things have to be so bad or so precarious that if the court doesn’t issue this TRO, you’re gonna be harmed incredibly.

And what the court did here in looking at the various winter factors is basically said, this is nowhere near a super compelling situation. Like the executives haven’t started their own competing firm, they haven’t gone to a competing company, at least not yet. And the big issue is around this one laptop. So it basically fails the factors that go into this winter test. And again, procedurally, they just denied the request for a TRO, but the litigation will still go ahead. So I’d say this is a very small win for the defendants and a very small loss for the plaintiff, but the litigation will still go forward. Certainly worth watching. But to me, it’s more of a procedural thing that makes it interesting versus good substance or bad substance.

Tim Londergan (07:33.583):
And it is.

Tim Londergan (07:43.818):
So a couple things. Well, I think it’s a good lesson for all of us in commingling personal stuff on work stuff. And I would say, boy, I’m not sure there’s anybody that doesn’t do that at this point. And so that I found kind of interesting. Look, if you just look at this case, you sort of see like, yeah, they haven’t talked about any love…

Chris (07:52.27):
Oh.

Tim Londergan (08:12.91):
…any specific trade secrets, right? Any really specific anything. And so it is pretty weak, right, on the surface. And obviously that, you know, kind of comes out in the decision. I mean, do you find something like this just as a sort of a way to say, just give us the laptop back? Is that what’s actually going on here? Like, is this trying to force the laptop issue? Because, you know, basically what it’s saying is, you know, the executive in question is saying, look, I don’t want to give you the laptop back yet because it’s my personal stuff. And I’m happy to give it to a third party and have them parse personal from business, but I’m not just going to hand you the laptop back. And so I kind of wonder, like, I don’t know, it looked like this was, this case is kind of doomed from the beginning. And so, but do you, do you almost have to file it? You know, is this like almost a requirement?

Chris (09:07.554):
Well, it’s very common first step for a plaintiff. So in litigation, there’s a lot of steps. And most of them are kind of like you just do it. Even if it’s optional, you do it anyways. So as a plaintiff, you often ask for a TRO right out of the gate. And admittedly, this one, it’s kind of weak. There’s not a whole lot of compelling urgency to this request.

Also, like for a defendant, the first thing that they do is ask for a summary judgment. Like basically say, the plaintiff hasn’t satisfied what they need to do for the case to go forward. So my guess is that will be the next thing to happen is the defendants will try to get summary judgment, but we’ll have to see. But again, that would be a very normal chain of events. And maybe there’s some more detail behind what the trade secrets actually are that are just not showing up. But at least so far it seems pretty thin.

Tim Londergan (10:08.958):
Yeah.

Tim Londergan (10:14.362):
And so one more point of speculation is if, you know, if this group of executives had already started another company, let’s just say, this would look very different. Would it not in terms of irreparable injury?

Chris (10:31.806):
Yeah, totally. And the two most common scenarios that we keep seeing over and over is a departing employee goes to a competitor and takes a lot of information with them, or they start their own competing shop and take a lot of information with them. And at least in this first document, it’s not really clear that either one of those has happened yet. So yeah, it would be a lot different if the facts were more normal. Again, to me, this is not a super compelling situation and that’s why the TRO was denied.

Tim Londergan (11:12.514):
Yeah. OK, cool. Thank you. That was great. And I think as we get deeper into our own case law reviews, yeah, there is no lack of procedure and steps in these cases. So talk about India. So you went to India as part of our partnership with Wipro.

So Wipro is a massive company and is a tangible investor. And so you were there a few weeks ago to kind of get the wheels turning with our partnership. And I’ve been to India since probably, you know, 2012, 13, maybe. And so it’s been quite some time. So first, I’m just super curious of… boots on the ground like what’s going on in India these days and where were you. And anything you tell me and us will be interesting. So love to hear about the trip.

Chris (12:17.322):
Absolutely. So I spent about a week and a half in India in February, so a month or two ago, and time flies, tangibly. And it was initially meant to visit Wipro, so I visited their facilities both in Bangalore and in Pune. But then I also gave seminars at three law schools in Pune and had just a great experience and great conversations.

Tim Londergan (12:25.526):
Okay, it’s been a little while, yep. Yeah.

Chris (12:46.102):
…with up and coming lawyers in India. And it was really interesting because I got a lot of super creative, unusual questions, but students at all three law schools all asked the same question, which is when will India have their own trade secret statute? Because India currently does not have anything. And if you have a trade secret stolen in India, you have to… kind of creatively patched together a few other causes of action. You know, there’s no specific statute like there is in US or Europe or China or Japan. And in all three law schools, I said the same thing, which is, I think India will get there, but you have to be patient. You know, it’ll probably be five years, maybe 10 years, maybe longer, before you have a trade secret specific statute.

And I was wrong. So it was kind of shocking, but on March 5th, so a week or two after I left, the Law Commission, which is a government-created body, they’re not a government agency, but they’re extremely persuasive in directing the legal system in India, came out with a 180-page report talking about how critical trade secrets are for Indian companies. And they even drafted like a sample statute for the Indian government to consider. So I wasn’t wrong, just my timing was way off.

Tim Londergan (13:48.49):
Yeah.

Chris (14:13.422):
That’s amazing. Yeah, usually it goes the other way. Predictions are usually way ahead of themselves. So that’s amazing. Well, it’d be interesting to see, as we’ve done a lot of work looking at how these laws differ from one jurisdiction to the next. I think at the core, procedurally, they’re often different and have sort of nuances, but at the core, they all sort of feel pretty much the same, which I think has been kind of an, yeah. Yeah.

Chris (15:05.09):
And it’s kind of interesting that the pressure to improve the legal system or to create new statutes actually comes from home. So we’ve seen the same thing in China and now with India that it’s the local companies that are putting pressure on government. So it’s not foreign companies or multinational companies that are international. I mean, they have some influence.

Tim Londergan (15:29.738):
Yeah.

Chris (15:34.786):
…the local companies that are saying this type of protection is important to our success. And it’s actually needed to buy Indian corporations. And that’s where the pressure is coming from. It’s not coming from US or Europe or overseas.

Tim Londergan (15:53.866):
It’s awesome. What was your favorite food? What’d you, like, you hadn’t been there in a little while either, right? Been a few years since you were there.

Chris (16:01.214):
Yeah, I hadn’t been there since before COVID. So it was really just getting back to all the spicy foods and interesting foods that I have loved from previous trips. It’s funny, there’s kind of an interesting correlation where the cheaper the food, the better it tastes.

Tim Londergan (16:10.72):
Hehehe

Tim Londergan (16:22.452):
Totally.

Chris (16:23.958):
But I had a great trip, met a lot of really good people, and they’re excited about the future of trade secrets and working with Tangibly.

Tim Londergan (16:35.146):
Fantastic. Well, here’s hoping to, the data on that guy’s computer gets parsed, they get their computer back and it ends happily ever after. So good first version. Yeah. Thanks Chris. Awesome man. Later.

Chris (16:50.187):
Yeah, I think it will. Awesome. OK, thanks, Tim. Talk soon.

Tim Londergan (16:58.858):

Bye.