Jim Flynn, an attorney in Epstein Becker & Green’s Newark, New Jersey office, recently addressed in separate forums the delicate balance that trade secret owners and their counsel must strike when litigating over trade secrets and confidential information. First, Mr. Flynn moderated a panel discussion among trade secret litigators (including one from Beijing) at the American Intellectual Property Law Association (“AIPLA”) Spring Meeting in Seattle, Washington. His May 16th AIPLA session was entitled “A Litigator’s Guide to Protecting Trade Secrets During Litigation,” and program materials included his written paper on the Catch-22 aspects noted above. Additionally, Mr. Flynn published on May 23, 2018 an International Lawyers Network IP Insider article entitled The Catch-22 Of Litigating Your Trade Secrets Case Without Revealing The Secrets Themselves that addressed these topics in further detail. As he pointed out in that article:
“You mean there’s a catch?”
“Sure there’s a catch,” Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.”
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
[Heller, Catch-22, at 52 (1999, S &S Classics Edition))]
Trade secret litigators (and especially trade secret trial attorneys) and their clients let out a similar whistle often—Because “trade-secret litigation” is an oxymoron in many ways. The very desire to protect one’s trade secrets, i.e. to keep them secret, requires disclosing them to a certain extent in certain ways to certain people (in other words making them less secret). Thus, the whistle is usually more regretful than respectful, as those forced to litigate to defend their trade secrets face a classic Catch-22 scenario. Rather than whistling a happy tune to overcome the fear of losing one’s trade secret protection, these litigants and litigators are whistling past the graveyard, knowing that all manner of frights, scares, and dangers—real and imagined—lurk in the pleading, discovery, motion and trial phases of such litigation. The goal here is give such litigants and litigators a few hints for making that a safer trip.