Judge Went Too Far Striking Trade Secrets Claims, 9th Cir. Says

A district judge improperly struck most allegedly stolen trade secrets from a case between DNA-sequencing companies for not being specific enough, the Ninth Circuit said Tuesday in a precedential decision.

District Judge William Alsup lacked a sound basis for functionally dismissing Quintara Biosciences Inc.'s claims regarding nine of 11 trade secrets it accused Ruifeng Biztech Inc. of misappropriating, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said, reversing the lower court and sending the case back.

The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act doesn’t share California’s requirement to identify secrets with “reasonable particularity” before discovery, and the two court rules ...