CACI 4402 “Trade Secret” Defined
California Civil Jury Instructions CACI
4402 “Trade Secret” Defined
To prove that the [select short term to describe, e.g., information] [was/were] [a] trade secret[s], [name of plaintiff] must prove all of the following:
1.That the [e.g., information] [was/were] secret;
2.That the [e.g., information] had actual or potential independent economic value because [it was/they were] secret; and
3.That [name of plaintiff] made reasonable efforts to keep the [e.g., information] secret.
New December 2007; Revised April 2008
https://crowdsourcelawyers.com/judicial-council-california-civil-jury-instructions-caci
Directions for Use
Give also CACI No. 4403, Secrecy Requirement, if more explanation of element 1 is needed. Give CACI No. 4412, “Independent Economic Value” Explained, if more explanation of element 2 is needed. Give CACI No. 4404, Reasonable Efforts to Protect Secrecy, if more explanation of element 3 is needed.
Sources and Authority
•“Trade Secret” Defined. Civil Code section 3426.1(d).
•“ ‘Trade secrets are a peculiar kind of property. Their only value consists in their being kept private.’ Thus, ‘the right to exclude others is central to the very definition of the property interest. Once the data that constitute a trade secret are disclosed to others, or others are allowed to use those data, the holder of the trade secret has lost his property interest in the data.’ ” (DVD Copy Control Assn., Inc. v. Bunner (2003) 31 Cal.4th 864, 881 [4 Cal.Rptr.3d 69, 75 P.3d 1], internal citations omitted.)
•“The ‘test for a trade secret is whether the matter sought to be protected is information (1) that is valuable because it is unknown to others and (2) that the owner has attempted to keep secret. [Citation.] … [I]n order to qualify as a trade secret, the information “must be secret, and must not be of public knowledge or of a general knowledge in the trade or business.” ’ ” (AMN Healthcare, Inc. v. Aya Healthcare Services, Inc. (2018) 28 Cal.App.5th 923, 943 [239 Cal.Rptr.3d 577].)
•“[A]ny information (such as price concessions, trade discounts and rebate incentives) disclosed to [cross-complainant’s] customers cannot be considered trade secret or confidential.” (Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co. (2002) 101 Cal.App.4th 1443, 1455 [125 Cal.Rptr.2d 277].)
•“ ‘[A] trade secret … has an intrinsic value which is based upon, or at least preserved by, being safeguarded from disclosure.’ Public disclosure, that is the absence of secrecy, is fatal to the existence of a trade secret. ‘If an individual discloses his trade secret to others who are under no obligation to protect the confidentiality of the information, or otherwise publicly discloses the secret, his property right is extinguished.’ A person or entity claiming a trade secret is also required to make ‘efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.’ ” (In re Providian Credit Card Cases (2002) 96 Cal.App.4th 292, 304 [116 Cal.Rptr.2d 833], internal citations omitted.)
•“The requirement that a customer list must have economic value to qualify as a trade secret has been interpreted to mean that the secrecy of this information provides a business with a ‘substantial business advantage.’ In this respect, a customer list can be found to have economic value because its disclosure would allow a competitor to direct its sales efforts to those customers who have already shown a willingness to use a unique type of service or product as opposed to a list of people who only might be interested.” (Morlife, Inc. v. Perry (1997) 56 Cal.App.4th 1514, 1522 [66 Cal.Rptr.2d 731], internal citations omitted.)
•“The sine qua non of a trade secret, then, is the plaintiff’s possession of information of a type that can, at the possessor’s option, be made known to others, or withheld from them, i.e., kept secret. This is the fundamental difference between a trade secret and a patent. A patent protects an idea, i.e., an invention, against appropriation by others. Trade secret law does not protect ideas as such. Indeed a trade secret may consist of something we would not ordinarily consider an idea (a conceptual datum) at all, but more a fact (an empirical datum), such as a customer’s preferences, or the location of a mineral deposit. In either case, the trade secret is not the idea or fact itself, but information tending to communicate (disclose) the idea or fact to another. Trade secret law, in short, protects only the right to control the dissemination of information.” (Silvaco Data Systems v. Intel Corp. (2010) 184 Cal.App.4th 210, 220–221 [109 Cal.Rptr.3d 27], original italics.)
•“[I]f a patentable idea is kept secret, the idea itself can constitute information protectable by trade secret law. In that situation, trade secret law protects the inventor’s ‘right to control the dissemination of information’—the information being the idea itself—rather than the subsequent use of the novel technology, which is protected by patent law. In other words, trade secret law may be used to sanction the misappropriation of an idea the plaintiff kept secret.” (Altavion, Inc. v. Konica Minolta Systems Laboratory, Inc. (2014) 226 Cal.App.4th 26, 55−56 [171 Cal.Rptr.3d 714], original italics, internal citations omitted.)
•“[T]he doctrine has been established that a trade secret can include a system where the elements are in the public domain, but there has been accomplished an effective, successful and valuable integration of the public domain elements and the trade secret gave the claimant a competitive advantage which is protected from misappropriation.” (Altavion, Inc., supra, 226 Cal.App.4th at p. 48.)