4. Public Information as a Trade Secret
Importantly, a trade secret may consist of public information and/or elements, combined with information and/or elements that are not generally known, as long as the combination is unknown, kept secret, and has independent economic value. (Altavion, Inc., 226 Cal. App. 4th at 48 (“even if some or all of the elements of [the plaintiff’s] design were in the public domain and thus unprotectable, the combination was a protectable trade secret if it was secret and had independent economic value”) (original italics); 02 Micro Int’l Ltd. v. Monolithic Power Sys., Inc., 420 F.Supp.2d 1070, 1089-1090 (N.D. Cal. March 9, 2006) (court affirmed jury instruction which stated, “Combinations of public information from a variety of different sources when combined in a novel way can be a trade secret. It does not matter if a portion of the trade secret is generally known, or even that every individual portion of the trade secret is generally known, as long as the combination of all such information is not generally known.”); SkinMedica, Inc. v. Histogen Inc., 869 F.Supp.2d 1176, 1194 (S.D. Cal. April 23, 2012) (“A trade secret may be comprised of partly or entirely non-secret elements and still merit protection.”) Often, the Defendants in a trade secret case, as those in the San Jose Const. case, complain that the information sought to be protected by Plaintiff was, in some manner, public. But, again, that is not fatal to a trade secret case. Rather, it is about having all the pieces of the puzzle to the exclusion of all others.
Must Trade Secrets be in writing? The next post will cover this topic
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