Insights

Washington – May 20, 2026: Crowell & Moring achieved a decisive victory for leading Enterprise AI application software company C3.ai, obtaining a $23.3 million jury verdict following a seven-day trial in Wilmington, Delaware. The jury unanimously found Cummins liable for trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract in a suit brought by C3.ai more than two and a half years ago.

A Virginia federal court recently delivered a useful reminder for trade secret owners: a missing NDA is not automatically fatal if the company can show it treated the information as genuinely confidential. In WeightPack, Inc. v. Mitchell, No. 3:25-cv-927 (E.D. Va. July 23, 2026), the court denied a former employee’s motion to dismiss trade secret claims under both the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Virginia Uniform Trade Secrets Act (VUTSA). The court held that the employer had plausibly alleged reasonable measures to protect secrecy even though the employee never signed a nondisclosure or confidentiality agreement.

RICO was built for the mob. But Congress gave trade secret victims access to it in 2016, and a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision shows that access is real.

A Kansas federal court held that inconsistent enforcement of trade secret rights can defeat a claim under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA). In Edelman Financial Engines, LLC v. Mariner Wealth Advisors LLC, No. 2:23-cv-02515-HLT (D. Kan. June 5, 2026), the court applied a selective enforcement theory, holding that when a company does not consistently pursue legal remedies against similarly situated former employees, that inconsistency can be affirmative evidence that it failed to protect its trade secrets. While the selective enforcement theory has appeared in academic hypothetical discussions, the decision appears to be one of the clearest judicial applications of a “selective enforcement” theory in a trade secret case.