Page 50 - FDCC Insights Spring 2022

account and the followers the reporter had on his account
were the newspaper’s trade secrets. The newspaper compared
the account followers to a customer list, which courts have
historically found can qualify as protected trade secrets. At
a preliminary injunction hearing, the court rejected the the country, courts will likely newspaper’s arguments, finding that the newspaper had
failed to establish that the account followers qualified as a
trade secret. In finding no trade secret, the court relied in part
on “the public nature of the Twitter content and followers.” employees’ social media
accounts.
In March, 2012, a Colorado federal court came to a different
conclusion. In Christou, et al. v. Beatport, LLC3, a nightclub
company sued an ex-employee for stealing the company’s
MySpace “friends” list. The ex-employee moved to dismiss
the lawsuit, arguing that a MySpace “friends” list couldn’t be a trade secret. The court denied the ex- employee’s motion, holding that a company’s MySpace profiles and friends list can be a trade secret because, online, a MySpace profile contains a lot more information than just the “friend’s” name. It gives the owner of the profile the “friend’s” personal information, including interests, preferences, and contact information
Given the unsettled nature of these issues, as well as the rise in trade secret litigation across
continue to provide conflicting answers as to how to categorize
3 849 F. Supp. 2d 1055 (D. Colo. 2012)
48
Insights SPRING2021