{"id":898472,"date":"2021-02-09T16:24:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T23:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/?p=898472"},"modified":"2021-02-09T16:24:44","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T23:24:44","slug":"trade-secrets-question-of-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/trade-secrets-question-of-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"Generally, What Constitutes a Trade Secret is a Question of Fact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>David Adelstein | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.floridaconstructionlegalupdates.com\/generally-what-constitutes-a-trade-secret-is-a-question-of-fact\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Florida Construction Legal Updates<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In construction, contractors maintain competitiveness by compiling, combining, utilizing, or developing proprietary and unique systems. \u00a0The systems can be from a cost standpoint (determining general conditions or general requirement costs and percentages including percentages for insurance) or can be with respect to certain construction assembly or delegated design components. \u00a0Such proprietary and unique systems are<strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/claims-handling-manual-trade-secret\/\">trade secrets<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to the contractors and efforts are taken to identify such information as\u00a0confidential\u00a0when proposing on a project. \u00a0Contractors would not want such systems disclosed to others because it would dilute and impact what they believe is valuable and makes them competitive in the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Florida\u2019s Uniform Trade Secret Act&nbsp;<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>(\u201cFUTSA\u201d) creates a statutory cause of action for the misappropriation of trade secrets<\/strong>.&nbsp; (FUTSA is set forth in Florida Statute s. 688.001 en seq.) &nbsp;<strong>FUTSA displaces or \u201cpreempts all claims [such as common law claims] based on misappropriation of trade secrets.<\/strong>\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Alphamed Pharmaceuticals Corp. v. Arriva Pharmaceuticals, Inc<\/em>., 391 F.Supp.2d 1148, 1167 (S.D.Fla. 2005).&nbsp;<em>See also<\/em>&nbsp;Fla. Stat. s. 688.008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Florida Statute s. 688.002 (found&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.leg.state.fl.us\/statutes\/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;URL=0600-0699\/0688\/Sections\/0688.002.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>) defines the terms \u201ctrade secret\u201d and \u201cmisappropriation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Of relevance, generally what constitutes a trade secret is a question of fact<\/strong>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>See DigiPort, Inc. v. Foram Development BFC, LLC<\/em>, 45 Fla.L.Weekly D2814 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020) (citation omitted).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This is because \u2018a trade secret can exist in a combination of characteristics and components, each of which, by itself, is in the public domain, but the unified process, design and operation of which&nbsp;<u>in unique combination<\/u>, affords a competitive advantage and is a protectable secret.\u201d Accordingly, \u2018[e]ven if all of the information is publicly available,&nbsp;<u>a unique compilation<\/u>&nbsp;of that information, which adds value to the information, may also qualify as a trade secret.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Id<\/em>. (internal citations omitted).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By way of example, in&nbsp;<em>DigiPort<\/em>, an information technology company sued a building owner for violation of FUTSA as well as common law claims associated with the trade secret misappropriation.&nbsp; The information technology company claimed it proposed the design of a single, centralized data center for computer hardware where tenants could rent space or use cloud computing services the company provided.&nbsp; The owner hired a different company to perform the same services and the information technology sued arguing that the owner utilized and disclosed the trade secret information to design and construct the same data center with a different vendor.&nbsp;&nbsp; The owner claimed the idea was not novel and such data centers were already in existence.&nbsp; &nbsp;The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the owner on the company\u2019s FUTSA claim but the appellate court reversed finding that there was a QUESTION OF FACT as to whether the data center the company proposed \u201ccontained elements which by themselves may be readily ascertainable in the public domain, but when viewed together may still qualify for trade secret protection.\u201d&nbsp;<em>Digiport, supra<\/em>&nbsp;(internal citation omitted). &nbsp;(The appellate court did however affirm summary judgment against the company as to a common law misappropriation claim since it was premised on identical factual allegations as the FUTSA claim and was preempted by FUTSA.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Adelstein | Florida Construction Legal Updates In construction, contractors maintain competitiveness by compiling, combining, utilizing, or developing proprietary and unique systems. \u00a0The systems can be from a cost standpoint (determining general conditions or general requirement costs and percentages including percentages for insurance) or can be with respect to certain construction assembly or delegated design&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/trade-secrets-question-of-fact\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Generally, What Constitutes a Trade Secret is a Question of Fact<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction-2","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Generally, What Constitutes a Trade Secret is a Question of Fact - Advise &amp; 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