citing, inter alia, Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 106 F.2d 45, 48 (2d Cir.1939), aff'd, 309 U.S. 390, 60 S.Ct. 681, 84 L.Ed. 825 (1940)
How later courts described this case
- citing, inter alia, Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 106 F.2d 45, 48 (2d Cir.1939), aff'd, 309 U.S. 390, 60 S.Ct. 681, 84 L.Ed. 825 (1940)
- citing, inter alia, Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 106 F.2d 45, _______ 48 (2d Cir. 1939), aff'd, 309 U.S. 390 (1940)
- arriving at lost profits calculation of $257,068 by taking defendant’s gross sales to plaintiff’s former customers, totaling $2,856,311.41, and applying plaintiff’s net profit margin of 9%
- discussing misappropriation claim as requiring a trade secret, breach of a confidential relationship by the defendant, and defendant’s use of the information without permission
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Kaplan, J.
(concurring). I join in the decision of the court, but with the feeling that the damages allowed are excessive. They are made so by being cast over a period of eleven years. The court indicates at note 13 that the "secret” was a simple one, a result of ordinary mechanical skill, and intimates some doubt that it could survive *185 as a protectible entity on October 1, 1975.1 suspect that it had perished in that sense some time before; that is to say, in the ordinary course of events the secret in substance would have become known and available at an earlier date, even if the defendants had not appropriated it and the plaintiffs had tried to keep it to themselves. This, however, was a matter of proof, and the trouble was, and is, that the record is virtually barren of the relevant facts and inferences.
In adding these remarks, I would like to suggest that if, as we are told, the law of trade secrets does not necessarily conflict with the patent law, 1 there is still excellent reason to apply it with beseeming modesty.
Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp., 416 U.S. 470 (1974). Doerfer, The Limits on Trade Secret Law Imposed by Federal Patent and Antitrust Supremacy, 80 Harv. L. Rev. 1432 (1967).