Another Casualty in Failing to Sufficiently Identify Trade Secrets
When Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) sued MarketDial and its founders for trade secret theft, it came armed with no fewer than 14 categories of what it said were confidential "jewels" of its business. These included its Standard Deployment Guide (SDG), Partner Capabilities Briefing (PCB) and various customized data feeds. APT claimed MarketDial's founders, who previously worked in consulting firms that evaluated APT's software, walked away with inside knowledge and used it to build a competing analytics platform.
Though this formed a compelling story, APT ran into a fundamental problem: The court couldn't tell what its trade secrets actually were. This circumstance is hardly new, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in upholding summary judgment for the defendant here, reaffirmed that a plaintiff cannot rely on only cursory or high-level definitions of its trade secrets and expect to prevail.
So, What Went Wrong?
1. APT Described Its "Trade Secrets" at a Very High Level
In responding to interrogatories (i.e., written answers provided under oath), APT basically pointed to broad buckets of information ("deployment guides," "capabilities briefings," "data feeds") without specifically spelling out what within those materials was secret.
The trial court found that this was simply too imprecise to determine if a trade secret actually existed. To decide whether something qualifies as a trade secret under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) or Utah's Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UUTSA), a judge or jury must know exactly what's being claimed. APT didn't provide that.
2. APT Claimed the "Compilation" Theory But Didn't Back It Up
APT argued that even if individual components didn't qualify as a trade secret, the compilation of that data did qualify. That can work in trade secret law, but only if the plaintiff explains why the compilation itself has independent value from its being not readily available or easily figured out.
APT didn't do that. The court said there was no meaningful explanation showing how the combination of its materials derived value from not being known or easily ascertainable. Without that explanation, APT's proffer of the compilation of its materials as a trade secret failed.
3. APT Expected the Court to Sift Through 200-Plus Exhibits and Figure It Out
Finally, in a last-gasp effort to prove that it had protectable trade secrets, APT submitted mountains of documents, such as expert reports, technical files and internal materials, and cited them in long, unstructured string cites. But it didn't tie them to specific trade secret definitions.
Courts have made clear that it's not the judge's job to assemble the puzzle. If the plaintiff can't clearly identify the trade secret, the claim fails.
The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court: Dropping hundreds of pages into the record and saying "the secret is in there somewhere" didn't cut it.
Why This Mattered
At summary judgment, the burden was on APT to define its trade secrets well enough that a fact‑finder could tell whether they fit the statutory definition. Utah law in particular doesn't require pinpoint particularity, but it does require enough clarity for the court to analyze value, secrecy and ascertainability.
APT never crossed that bar. As the court put it, "APT's response to Appellees' interrogatories and APT's opposition to Appellees' summary-judgment motion failed to identify and define its alleged trade secrets 'in a manner that allows the fact-finder to determine if a trade secret exists under the statute.'" Accordingly, the Federal Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment for MarketDial.
Bottom Line
APT may well have had valuable internal materials, but in litigation, you can't just say, "Trust us, it's all trade secret stuff." You must spell it out – clearly, specifically and tied to statutory criteria. Because the trial court found that APT didn't do that, its trade secret claims collapsed.