The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently held that limited disclosures of a product, such as through patents and trade show displays, would not defeat a company’s reasonable efforts to protect its confidential information.
The case involves two competing medical device manufacturers: Life Spine, Inc. (Life Spine), which makes and sells surgically implanted medical devices to treat spine disorders; and AegisSpine, Inc. (Aegis), which sells similar medical devices created by its parent company L&K Biomed, Inc. (L&K). Life Spine spent more than three years of intensive study and exhaustive trial and error to design and develop its ProLift Expandable Spacer System (ProLift), an expandable cage used to treat degenerative disc disease. Eventually, it was FDA approved and Spine Life obtained a patent. Although the patent displays drawings and figures of the expandable cage, Life Spine considers the “precise dimensions and measurements of the ProLift components and subcomponents and their interconnectivity” to be confidential trade secrets. Continue Reading Not All or Nothing: Trade Secrets Survive Patents and Other Limited Disclosures