Third Circuit Upholds Trade Secret Protection for NASA Supplier
Even Though Supplier Did Not Own the Trade Secret
In trade secret litigation, particularly among government
contractors, defenses are sometimes asserted based on whether the
plaintiff actually owns or retains a sufficient interest in the
trade secret at issue. This can arise, for example, in the context
of data rights disputes when a prime or subcontractor's trade
secret was delivered to its government customer, and the defendant
contractor later accused of misappropriating the alleged trade
secret may cry, "It's government property." (In this
scenario, the government may be a licensee with unlimited rights to
the contractor's deliverable but usually does not own it or the
underlying intellectual property.) Or, as demonstrated in a recent
opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in
Advanced Fluid Systems Inc. (AFS) v. Huber et al.,1 a
defendant may assert that the alleged trade secret
