Trade Secret

South Korea's Supreme Court has finalized a ruling ordering game developer Ironmace and its founders to pay approximately $4.2 million in damages to Nexon, one of the country's largest game publishers. The April 30, 2026, decision ends a five-year legal battle over allegations that former Nexon employees took proprietary source code and game development materials with them when they left the company to create the hit dungeon-crawling game Dark and Darker. For business owners

A federal court in the Southern District of New York recently upheld a $70 million compensatory damages verdict in Syntel Sterling Best Shores Mauritius Ltd. v. The TriZetto Group Inc., a trade secret case involving health care insurance software that has been litigated for more than a decade. The March 27, 2026, decision is significant because the court endorsed a flexible, fact-based approach to calculating trade secret damages, rejecting the defendant's demand for a rigid

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently affirmed a district court's decision to vacate a $75 million jury verdict in Trinseo Europe GmbH v. Kellogg Brown & Root, L.L.C. , a case involving the alleged theft of polycarbonate manufacturing technology. The ruling sends a clear message to businesses pursuing trade secret claims: proving that your secrets were stolen is only half the battle. If you cannot clearly tie your damages to each specific trade secret that

Two recent federal court decisions have put businesses on notice: sharing confidential information with public artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can permanently destroy trade secret protection. The rulings, issued in early 2026, are among the first to directly address the legal consequences of disclosing proprietary information to AI platforms, and they carry significant implications for any company that uses generative AI in its operations. The Trinidad v. OpenAI De

A San Antonio jury recently awarded $175 million to real estate analytics firm HouseCanary Inc. after finding that title company Amrock LLC misappropriated proprietary appraisal technology and data. The verdict, which came after a nearly four-week trial in Bexar County, Texas, marks the second time a jury has sided with HouseCanary in this long-running dispute. For business owners who rely on proprietary data, algorithms, or processes to stay competitive, the case delivers a