Our friends at Lex Machina recently released the tenth expansion to their Legal Analytics® platform. This module gives attorneys data-driven insights and greater transparency into the complex world of trade secret litigation.
Our friends at Lex Machina recently released the tenth expansion to their Legal Analytics® platform. This module gives attorneys data-driven insights and greater transparency into the complex world of trade secret litigation. The press release follows.
“Lex Machina, a LexisNexis company, announced the highly anticipated expansion of its award-winning Legal Analytics® platform to cover trade secret litigation – the platform’s tenth practice area. The new module encompasses over 9,600 cases involving trade secret litigation pending in federal court since 2009, including those filed under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) of 2016.
‘Trade secret analytics has been among the most requested additions to Lex Machina’s platform because, until now, finding and analyzing specific cases involving trade secret litigation has been extremely difficult, costly and time consuming,’ said Karl Harris, President and COO at Lex Machina. ‘The new trade secret litigation module gives attorneys access to the largest, most comprehensive and accurate dataset available for analyzing trade secret misappropriation cases.’
Prior to the DTSA, cases involving trade secrets were litigating a state or common law claim in federal court. This could only happen when the case also met the strict jurisdictional requirements for federal court: disputes involving diverse parties and an amount in controversy greater than $75,000, or disputes involving federal law. As a result, these cases were often combined with other types of cases – e.g., patent, trademark, commercial, employment, etc. This combination with other claims made it difficult to locate trade secret misappropriation cases
The module provides valuable data-driven insights and trends in cases alleging misappropriation of trade secrets under state law for cases open in U.S. district court from 2009 through present and for cases with DTSA claims since its enactment on May 11, 2016. It also illuminates the track records of opposing counsel and parties, the experience and behaviors of judges, plus case timing, resolutions, remedies, damages, injunctions and more.
‘Recent high-profile cases and shifts in American trade policies have propelled trade secret litigation into the spotlight,’ continued Harris. ‘With Legal Analytics, attorneys can now get instant answers to questions that can help them formulate winning strategies such as: Does this lawsuit have a reasonable chance for a temporary restraining order? What cases or types of cases have resulted in damages or an injunction? Or, what type of relief has this judge granted in the past for DTSA causes of action?’
Challenges to trade secret analytics
Because there are no Nature of Suit (NOS) codes for trade secrets cases in PACER, the database of district court case filings, Lex Machina had to train its natural language processing algorithms to search for specific trade secret-related terms, then data-mine millions of PACER documents to identify and tag relevant cases. Once tagged, Legal Analytics can now isolate trade secret misappropriation claims in commercial, employment or intellectual property cases. This enables attorneys to better filter and analyze the trade secrets elements of these combined cases and prepare winning legal strategies.
In addition, Lex Machina interviewed senior litigators from top law firms and major corporations with expertise in trade secret misappropriation litigation and implemented their feedback on particular analytics requirements and use cases.
With the launch of its trade secret module, Lex Machina has uncovered some interesting insights within the data including:
- The Central District of California sees the most trade secret cases (7%), followed by the Southern District of New York (5%) and the District of Illinois (5%).
- Top law firms retained in trade secret cases include firms that specialize in labor and employment law, as many trade secret cases involve former employees.
- More than 1,350 cases with DTSA claims have been filed during the two years since it was enacted on May 11, 2016; only 11 of the 550+ currently active Article III district judges have evaluated DTSA claims on contested motions or presided over the issue at trial
- 71% of trade secret cases that resolve at trial are won by claimants whereas 29% are won by claim defendants
About Lex Machina
Lex Machina’s award-winning Legal Analytics® platform is a new category of legal technology that fundamentally changes how companies and law firms compete in the business and practice of law. Delivered as Software-as a-Service, Lex Machina provides strategic insights on judges, lawyers, parties, and more, mined from millions of pages of legal information. This allows law firms and companies to predict the behaviors and outcomes that different legal strategies will produce, enabling them to win cases and close business.
Legal Analytics was named “Best Legal Analytics” by readers of The Recorder in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and received the “Best New Product of the Year” award in 2015 from the American Association of Law Libraries. The company was named a “Legal A.I. Leader” by The National Law Journal in 2018.
Based in Silicon Valley, Lex Machina is part of LexisNexis, a leading information provider and a pioneer in delivering trusted legal content and insights through innovative research and productivity solutions, supporting the needs of legal professionals at every step of their workflow. By harnessing the power of Big Data, LexisNexis provides legal professionals with essential information and insights derived from an unmatched collection of legal and news content—fueling productivity, confidence, and better outcomes. For more information, please visit www.lexmachina.com.
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