Bondpro Corporation v. Siemens Power Genera ( 2006 )


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  •                             In the
    United States Court of Appeals
    For the Seventh Circuit
    ____________
    No. 05-3077
    BONDPRO CORPORATION,
    Plaintiff-Appellant,
    v.
    SIEMENS POWER GENERATION, INC.,
    Defendant-Appellee.
    ____________
    Appeal from the United States District Court
    for the Western District of Wisconsin.
    No. 04 C 0026 C—Barbara B. Crabb, Chief Judge.
    ____________
    ARGUED MAY 11, 2006—DECIDED SEPTEMBER 12, 2006
    ____________
    Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and WOOD, Circuit Judges.
    POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff in this diversity suit
    for theft of a trade secret won a verdict on liability from
    the jury; but before the jury proceeded to the second stage
    of a bifurcated trial—that of determining what damages,
    if any, the plaintiff had suffered—the district judge
    granted judgment for the defendant as a matter of law.
    Wisconsin law—but as adopted in Wisconsin, the Uniform
    Trade Secrets Act is to “be applied and construed to make
    uniform the law relating to misappropriation of trade
    secrets among states enacting substantially identical laws.”
    2                                                  No. 05-3077
    
    Wis. Stat. § 134.90
    (7). And so “decisions by other jurisdic-
    tions [than Wisconsin] on questions involving the UTSA are
    to be given careful consideration.” Minuteman, Inc. v.
    Alexander, 
    434 N.W.2d 773
    , 779-80 (Wis. 1989).
    We begin with some jurisdictional issues. Our Circuit Rule
    28(a)(1) requires that the jurisdictional statement in a
    diversity suit name the states of which the parties are
    citizens. In violation of this rule, the jurisdictional statement
    in the plaintiff’s brief fails to indicate the citizenship of the
    parties (both of which are corporations); it says only that
    they are “citizens of different states.” The defendant’s brief,
    compounding the violation, states that the plaintiff’s
    jurisdictional statement is complete and correct. So we
    ordered the parties to supplement their jurisdic-
    tional statements, and the responses indicate that the parties
    are indeed citizens of different states and thus that the
    district court had diversity jurisdiction, for the case
    was removed to the district court by the out-of-state party
    and the amount-in-controversy requirement is satisfied. But
    the defendant’s response added: “it appears that BondPro
    is not a corporation in ‘good standing’ with the State of
    Wisconsin, as its status of April 1, 2004, is listed as delin-
    quent.” Inquiry of the plaintiff’s counsel at oral argument
    revealed that he didn’t know his client’s current status
    under Wisconsin law or whether that law authorizes a
    delinquent Wisconsin corporation to bring a suit in a
    Wisconsin state court. Apparently it does. The only conse-
    quence of delinquency is that the Wisconsin Department of
    Financial Institutions can bring an administrative proceed-
    ing to dissolve the corporation, 
    Wis. Stat. § 180.1420
    , and
    this was not done. And shortly after the oral argument
    BondPro was restored to good standing.
    Anyway, until a corporation’s charter is revoked, it
    remains a corporate citizen of the state of incorporation, and
    No. 05-3077                                                      3
    no more is necessary to allow it to maintain a suit in a
    federal court, Smith v. Arundel Cooperative, Inc., 
    660 F. Supp. 912
    , 913 (D.D.C. 1987); 15 Moore’s Federal Practice § 102.56[9],
    p. 102-132.5 (3d ed. 2005)—at least as a matter of federal
    jurisdiction; for it is always open to a defendant to show
    that the plaintiff in a diversity suit lacks capacity, under the
    law of the plaintiff’s state, to bring a suit. Fed. R. Civ. P.
    9(a). Any such defense was waived here, however, because
    while noting BondPro’s delinquency the defendant makes
    no argument for dismissal based on it. Since a corporation’s
    authority to sue in its state courts is not a jurisdictional
    prerequisite to removal on grounds of diversity, Maryland
    People’s Counsel v. FERC, 
    760 F.2d 318
    , 319 (D.C. Cir. 1985)
    Summers v. Interstate Tractor & Equipment Co., 
    466 F.2d 42
    ,
    49-50 (9th Cir. 1972) Zelinger v. Uvalde Rock Asphalt Co., 
    316 F.2d 47
    , 53 (10th Cir. 1963); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(a);
    Wagner Furniture Interiors, Inc. v. Kemner’s Georgetown
    Manner, Inc., 
    929 F.2d 343
    , 345-46 (7th Cir. 1991); MTO
    Maritime Transport Over-Seas, Inc. v. McLendon Forwarding
    Co., 
    837 F.2d 215
    , 218 (5th Cir. 1988), the waiver eliminates
    the issue from our consideration.
    We add that even if the plaintiff had dissolved since the
    removal of the case to the district court, this would not
    affect jurisdiction, United States Liability Ins. Co. v. Fassbinder
    United Builders, Inc., No. 99 C 50330, 
    2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1991
    , at *2 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 12, 2003); see Wild v. Subscription
    Plus, Inc., 
    292 F.3d 526
    , 528 (7th Cir. 2002), unless its dissolu-
    tion signified that there was no longer an adversary pro-
    ceeding. But there might be; the dissolved corporation
    might have a successor that could be substituted for it and
    the suit continue. With immaterial exceptions, jurisdiction
    depends on the facts that exist when the suit is filed, e.g.,
    Grupo Dataflux v. Atlas Global Group, L.P., 
    541 U.S. 567
    , 570
    (2004)—which means, by the way, that if BondPro had been
    4                                                 No. 05-3077
    dissolved before suing and the dissolution had eliminated
    any interest it had in the suit, resurrection of the corporation
    after the suit was filed would not have conferred jurisdic-
    tion. Wild v. Subscription Plus, Inc., supra, 
    292 F.3d at 528
    .
    A further sign of the lawyers’ carelessness is that their
    briefs are miscaptioned. The name of the defendant is given
    as “Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation,” which was
    changed before the appeal was filed. One might have
    expected the defendant’s lawyer, at least, to know the name
    of his client. The lawyers’ insouciance about jurisdiction,
    however, goes beyond carelessness, and we hereby direct
    counsel for both parties to show cause within ten days from
    the date of this decision why they should not be sanctioned
    for violating our circuit rule.
    There is still another jurisdictional issue. It is whether
    BondPro has anything tangible to gain from reinstating
    the jury’s verdict, for if not there is no case or contro-
    versy within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution.
    But to explain the issue will require a summary of the facts.
    BondPro is a small company that manufactures products
    (it is still in business despite its scrape with the Wisconsin
    corporate authorities) that require the bonding of dissimilar
    materials. Siemens (a subsidiary of the German conglomer-
    ate), the defendant, makes electrical generators. The genera-
    tors produce electrical power by spinning rotors over
    magnets. The rotors have slots into which copper coils are
    wedged. The outer layer of each coil consists of insulation
    material in the form of a U-shaped “slot cell.” Siemens
    manufactures slot cells by first placing the insulation
    material in a U-shaped (“female”) container and then
    pressing a “male” mold on top and applying heat. This
    process compresses the insulation into a rigid U-shaped
    material that can slide into the slots. The process resembles
    No. 05-3077                                                 5
    putting material into a bowl and pressing another, slightly
    smaller bowl into the first bowl to compress and harden the
    material inside that bowl.
    The disadvantage of the process is that the slot cell may
    emerge with wrinkles in the insulation material that are
    difficult to smooth out. BondPro developed (though it
    has never marketed) a process that dispenses with the
    female mold. Instead the insulating material is placed on the
    outside of the male mold and pressed against it by placing
    the mold and the insulation material in a vacuum bag so
    that air pressure compresses the material against the mold.
    Any remaining wrinkles are smoothed by hand. The
    ensemble consisting of the mold and the insulation material
    pressed against it is then placed in an autoclave, a container
    in which high levels of heat and air pressure are applied to
    the contents. The heat and pressure compress the insulation
    coating the mold into the desired rigid shape and it is then
    removed from the male mold and slid into a rotor’s slot.
    In 2001, Scott Wang, BondPro’s principal, explained and
    later demonstrated the process to Mark Miller, a materials
    engineer employed by Siemens. Though there were
    some negotiations, they resulted only in agreement (as we
    shall see) on confidentiality; Siemens didn’t seek a license
    from BondPro to use the process, even though BondPro had
    made clear in the course of the negotiations that it believed
    it had proprietary rights to it. Instead Miller filed a patent
    application on behalf of Siemens for a process similar to
    BondPro’s (more precisely, similar to the description of
    BondPro’s process in its appeal briefs) although among
    other differences it does not specify the use of an autoclave
    for the final step of hardening the insulation materials
    coating the male mold. There are other ways of applying
    heat and pressure; no particular way is specified in the
    patent application.
    6                                                 No. 05-3077
    The Patent Office rejected Siemens’ application and
    Siemens has never used the process. Nor for that matter has
    BondPro, except to make some prototypes to show Siemens.
    There may have been some use of BondPro’s process by
    other companies, but if so there is no evidence of the value
    of such use.
    Anybody other than Siemens can use the BondPro process
    without liability because, as BondPro acknowledges and
    indeed asserts, the process was disclosed to the world in
    Siemens’s patent application. A trade secret that becomes
    public knowledge is no longer a trade secret. Ruckelshaus v.
    Monsanto Co., 
    467 U.S. 986
    , 1002 (1984); CVD, Inc. v.
    Raytheon Co., 
    769 F.2d 842
    , 850 (1st Cir. 1985); see ECT Int’l,
    Inc. v. Zwerlein, 
    597 N.W.2d 479
    , 482 (Wis. App. 1999). The
    mere fact of mention in a public document is
    not controlling; no one may have noticed the document. See
    Hoechst Diafoil Co. v. Nan Ya Plastic Co., 
    174 F.3d 411
    , 418
    (4th Cir. 1999); Gates Rubber Co. v. Bando Chemical Industries,
    Ltd., 
    9 F.3d 823
    , 849 (10th Cir. 1993). Publication in a patent
    destroys the trade secret, On-Line Technologies, Inc. v.
    Bodenseewerk Perkin-Elmer GMBH, 
    386 F.3d 1133
    , 1141 (Fed.
    Cir. 2004); Scharmer v. Carrollton Mfg. Co., 
    525 F.2d 95
    , 99
    (6th Cir. 1975), because patents are intended to be widely
    disclosed—that is the quid for the quo of the patentee’s
    exclusive right to make and sell the patented device. But
    patent applications are not patents, and they used to be
    secret. However, now they have to be published after 18
    months, 
    35 U.S.C. § 122
    (b)(i); 1-1 Roger M. Milgrim, Milgrim
    on Trade Secrets § 1.06 n. 22 (2006), the aim of this rule being
    to disseminate the knowledge revealed in the application to
    the inventor community so that other inventors can build
    upon it. Published patent applications are in fact studied by
    inventors in the relevant field, and so a secret disclosed in
    them will ordinarily (we need not decide whether invari-
    No. 05-3077                                                    7
    ably) lose its status as a trade secret. Vital State Canada, Ltd.
    v. Dreampak, LLC, 
    303 F. Supp. 2d 516
    , 525 (D.N.J. 2003). Of
    course a patent application that is rejected, as Siemens’ was,
    is less likely to contain information that other inventors
    would want to use, but it might, since patent examiners are
    not infallible and a patent application might disclose some
    novel features or bring to light some forgotten prior art.
    But had it not been for the alleged theft of BondPro’s
    secret by Siemens, there would have been no patent applica-
    tion. So while someone who learned about BondPro’s
    process from the application or some other source traceable
    to Siemens would have no liability for using the process
    without BondPro’s consent, Underwater Storage, Inc. v.
    United States Rubber Co., 
    371 F.2d 950
    , 955 (D.C. Cir. 1966);
    DVD Copy Control Ass’n, Inc. v Bunner, 
    75 P.3d 1
    , 27-28 (Cal.
    2003) (concurring opinion), Siemens would be liable to
    BondPro for the consequences of enabling the innocent
    copying by revealing BondPro’s trade secret to the world.
    Syntex Opthalmics, Inc. v. Tsuetaki, 
    701 F.2d 677
    , 683 (7th Cir.
    1983); Shellmar Products Co. v. Allen-Qualley Co., 
    87 F.2d 104
    ,
    109-10 (7th Cir. 1936); Underwater Storage, Inc. v. United
    States Rubber Co., supra, 
    371 F.2d at 955
    ; DVD Copy Control
    Ass’n, Inc. v Bunner, supra, 75 P.3d at 27-28 (concurring
    opinion); Daniel W. Park, “Trade Secrets, the First Amend-
    ment, and Patent Law: A Collision on the Information
    Superhighway, 
    10 Stan. J.L. Bus. & Fin. 46
    , 56-57 (2004). To
    disclose a trade secret without authorization is unlawful,
    
    Wis. Stat. § 134.90
    (2)(b); Hicklin Engineering, L.C. v. Bartell,
    
    439 F.3d 346
    , 349 (7th Cir. 2006); Learning Curve Toys, Inc. v.
    PlayWood Toys, Inc., 
    342 F.3d 714
    , 726 (7th Cir. 2003), and the
    wrongdoer is liable for the consequences.
    But there is no evidence of the value of any use that others
    may have made of BondPro’s process who may have
    8                                                     No. 05-3077
    learned of it directly or indirectly from Siemens. When to
    this absence of evidence is added the fact that neither
    BondPro nor Siemens has used the process commercially
    despite the investment that both companies made in its
    development (such as BondPro’s construction of prototype
    slot cells for Siemens and Siemens’ filing of a patent applica-
    tion), that Siemens apparently did not use the process
    because it decided it cost more than the conventional
    process that it was using to manufacture slot cells, and that
    the patent application describing a similar process was
    rejected, the inference is compelling that the process neither
    had when disclosed to the public, nor has, measurable
    commercial value.
    Even a trade secret that had never been used at all could
    have a market value, enabling damages from the destruc-
    tion of the secret to be estimated. DSC Communications Corp.
    v. Next Level Communications, 
    107 F.3d 322
    , 329-30 (5th Cir.
    1997); Metallurgical Industries, Inc. v. Fourtek, Inc., 
    790 F.2d 1195
    , 1208 (5th Cir. 1986); Precision Plating & Metal Finishing,
    Inc. v. Martin-Marietta Corp., 
    435 F.2d 1262
    , 1263-64 (5th Cir.
    1970). Otherwise trade secrets could not be licensed before
    they were used. But apart from a palpably inadequate
    expert’s report rightly rejected by the district judge,
    BondPro presented no evidence that would have enabled
    the market value of its process to be estimated on any basis
    other than wild conjecture. See Pioneer Hi-Bred Int’l v. Holden
    Foundation Seeds, Inc., 
    35 F.3d 1226
    , 1245 (8th Cir. 1994);
    Metallurgical Industries, Inc. v. Fourtek, Inc., supra, 
    790 F.2d at 1208
    ; Jillian’s Billiard Club v. Belloff Billiards, Inc., 
    619 N.E.2d 635
    , 638 (Mass. App. 1993).
    Although a damages remedy is thus out of the question,
    we do not think the case is (quite) moot. BondPro is seeking
    injunctive relief as well as damages, and it would presum-
    No. 05-3077                                                    9
    ably be entitled to an injunction against Siemens’ using the
    process itself, since, if BondPro is right, Siemens learned of
    the process only by stealing BondPro’s trade secret, and it
    should not be allowed to profit from its wrongful act. Syntex
    Opthalmics, Inc. v. Tsuetaki, 
    supra,
     
    701 F.2d at 683
    ; Shellmar
    Products Co. v. Allen-Qualley Co., supra 
    87 F.2d at 109-10
    .
    Siemens says it has no plans to use the process, but conceiv-
    ably it might change its mind if its legal jeopardy were
    removed.
    How long such an injunction should last is a separate
    question, though not one we need resolve. Minuteman, Inc.
    v. Alexander, supra, 434 N.W.2d at 779, holds that the
    injunction “should terminate when a former trade secret
    becomes either generally known to good faith competitors
    or generally knowable to them because of the lawful
    availability of products that can be reverse engineered to
    reveal a trade secret,” unless the infringer has benefited
    from having used it first; in that event the injunction should
    continue until the advantage over competitors conferred by
    this wrongfully acquired lead time has dissipated.
    Coming at last to the merits, we consider first whether
    BondPro’s process was ever a trade secret, and second
    whether if so it was improperly disclosed to the world by
    Siemens. It was not a secret from Siemens. BondPro dis-
    closed it to Siemens in the hope of licensing it. Although it
    is awkward to license a trade secret because the negotiation
    necessarily reveals the secret to the prospective licensee, that
    revelation, as well as the revelation to suppliers and licens-
    ees, is obviously not the kind of disclosure that forfeits the
    protection of trade-secret law, Rockwell Graphic Systems, Inc.
    v. DEV Industries, Inc., 
    925 F.2d 174
    , 179 (7th Cir. 1991); Clark
    v. Bunker, 
    453 F.2d 1006
    , 1010 (9th Cir. 1972), as otherwise
    trade secrets could not be licensed.
    10                                                  No. 05-3077
    What does forfeit protection is a failure to take reasonable
    steps to prevent gratuitous disclosure. 
    Wis. Stat. § 134.90
    (1)(c)(2); IDX Systems Corp. v. Epic Systems Corp., 
    285 F.3d 581
    , 583 (7th Cir 2002); see also ECT Int’l, Inc. v.
    Zwerlein, 
    supra,
     
    597 N.W.2d at 482
    . Failure to take such steps
    is persuasive evidence that the secret has no real value.
    Courts are entitled, moreover, to economize on their scarce
    resources of time and effort by refusing to help a secret
    holder who failed to take minimum steps to protect his
    secret before running to court. Rockwell Graphic Systems, Inc.
    v. DEV Industries, Inc., supra, 
    925 F.2d at 179
    . Failure to take
    protective steps also sets a trap, since a company that ferrets
    out information that the originator does not think special
    enough to be worth incurring any costs to conceal will have
    no reason to believe that it is a trade secret. 
    Id.
    But BondPro did take measures to conceal its process that
    a reasonable jury could find sufficient. They included
    negotiating confidentiality agreements with employees,
    customers, and suppliers (including Siemens, with which it
    had two such agreements) and assuring that the process
    itself and documents describing it were kept under lock and
    key. 
    Id. at 177, 180
    ; Hicklin Engineering, L.C. v. Bartell, 
    supra,
    439 F.3d at 350
    ; Valco Cincinnati, Inc. v. N & D Machining
    Service, Inc., 
    492 N.E.2d 814
    , 819 (Ohio 1986). But because a
    trade secret is not a property right in anything like the sense
    in which copyright law and patent law create property
    rights, a would-be “thief” may be able to “steal” your secret
    without liability, for example if he copies it by reverse
    engineering or stumbles on it innocently (maybe you
    mislaid the document that describes it). ConFold Pacific, Inc.
    v. Polaris Industries, Inc., 
    433 F.3d 952
    , 958-59 (7th Cir. 2006).
    In general, it is only when the theft is accomplished by a tort
    or a breach of contract that there is liability. So it is critical
    to consider whether Siemens violated its contractual
    No. 05-3077                                                    11
    undertaking not to use or disclose information that BondPro
    conveyed to it as part of a negotiation for a possible sale or
    license of BondPro’s process.
    In the course of a negotiation the parties are sure to
    convey all sorts of information to each other that either
    has no commercial value or is already known to the receiv-
    ing party from some other source. To use or disclose such
    information without the permission of the informing party
    is not a breach of a confidentiality agreement. Cf. IDX
    Systems Corp. v. Epic Systems Corp., supra, 
    285 F.3d at 586
    .
    Anyway the agreements in this case expressly exclude
    information that is generally known, or known to Siemens
    before the disclosure to it by BondPro, or was developed by
    Siemens independently of the disclosure. BondPro’s Wang
    described and demonstrated to Siemens’ Miller the process
    and in so doing conveyed information. But how much of it
    was information at once previously unknown to Miller,
    unlikely to be discovered by him shortly, and commercially
    valuable? These questions are intertwined because a
    conveyance of information that is already common knowl-
    edge has no commercial value. That is why a suit for the
    appropriation of a trade secret requires proof that the
    information constituting the secret “derives independent
    economic value, actual or potential, from not being gener-
    ally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper
    means by, other persons who can obtain economic value
    from its disclosure or use.” 
    Wis. Stat. § 134.90
    (1)(c)(1); ECT
    Int’l Inc. v. Zwerlein, 
    supra,
     
    597 N.W.2d at 482
    ; Hogan
    Systems, Inc. v. Cybersource Int’l, Inc., 
    158 F.3d 319
    , 325 (5th
    Cir. 1998).(“If the plaintiff has allowed his trade secret to fall
    into the public domain, he would enjoy a windfall if
    permitted to recover damages merely because the defendant
    took the secret from him, rather than from the public
    domain as it could have done with impunity.” Rockwell
    12                                                No. 05-3077
    Graphic Systems, Inc. v. DEV Industries, Inc., supra, 
    925 F.2d at 179
    . The confidentiality agreements essentially just
    restated the statutory criteria of a trade secret.
    The answers to the questions posed in the preceding
    paragraph depend on just what BondPro’s claimed trade
    secret is. Is it merely the manufacture of rotor-coil insulation
    by applying heat and air pressure to insulation materials
    draped as it were around the fittingly named “male mold,”
    as BondPro sometimes suggests? This was something Miller
    and others in the trade knew already because a company
    named Torr Technologies had described this method in
    advertising materials that Miller, doubtless along with
    others, had been given at a trade convention that he had
    attended in 2000. BondPro argues that Siemens should be
    estopped to make such an argument because the first claim
    in its patent application describes just such a barebones
    process, and if it was anticipated by Torr (“prior art”)
    Siemens was lying to the Patent Office when it claimed that
    the process was novel (a requirement for the grant of a
    patent). But if Siemens played fast and loose with the Patent
    Office—even if it committed a fraud on the Patent Of-
    fice—this was not a violation of BondPro’s rights if, by
    virtue of Torr’s anticipation, the process that BondPro now
    claims as a trade secret was known to the trade.
    So if BondPro really had an invention that was con-
    cealed from Siemens, there would have to be more detail
    to it than we have thus far indicated; but we cannot find the
    detail. In places BondPro hints that the trade secret includes
    not just the heat and the air pressure but that these forces
    are exerted in an autoclave. Yet in its brief, in listing nine
    components that constitute the trade secret (some of them
    almost risible, such as “Stacking of Materials on Mold”),
    there is no mention of an autoclave, just of “Application of
    No. 05-3077                                                   13
    Simultaneous Heat and Pressure,” which could be done by
    other means, as by combining a convection oven to provide
    heat with a shrink-tape process (“shrink tape,” as the term
    implies, is a wrapping that squeezes by shrinking) to
    provide pressure.
    One expects a trade secret to be rich in detail, because a
    process described in general terms (squeeze insulation
    materials draped on the male mold with heat and air
    pressure rather than pressing the male mold into a
    female mold containing the materials) will usually be
    widely known and thus not worth incurring costs to try to
    conceal and so not a trade secret. See IDX Systems Corp. v.
    Epic Systems Corp., supra, 
    285 F.3d at 583-84
    ; Composite
    Marine Propellers, Inc. v. Van Der Woude, 
    962 F.2d 1263
    , 1266
    (7th Cir. 1992) (per curiam); ECT Int’l, Inc. v. Zwerlein, 
    supra,
    597 N.W.2d at 482-83
    ; cf. Trandes Corp. v. Guy F. Atkinson
    Co., 
    996 F.2d 655
    , 661-62 (4th Cir. 1993). In its reply brief
    BondPro acknowledges that “many of the elements of the
    BondPro slot cell manufacturing process were in the public
    domain” but states that “the precise execution of each
    element, in conjunction with the precise execution of each
    additional element, renders BondPro’s process a secret.” But
    BondPro has not told us what those details of execution or
    implementation are. For example, in the list of nine compo-
    nents the temperature and the duration of the application of
    heat are stated as a broad range rather than as specific
    numbers—and anyway Wang obtained the range from
    Siemens! And a broad range was all that Siemens’s patent
    application disclosed—so if BondPro’s trade secret resides
    in specifics that have not been disclosed to us, Siemens is
    not responsible for their disclosure.
    AFFIRMED.
    14                                           No. 05-3077
    A true Copy:
    Teste:
    _____________________________
    Clerk of the United States Court of
    Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
    USCA-02-C-0072—9-12-06
    

Document Info

Docket Number: 05-3077

Judges: Per Curiam

Filed Date: 9/12/2006

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 9/24/2015

Authorities (32)

Cvd, Incorporated v. Raytheon Company, and Third-Party , 769 F.2d 842 ( 1985 )

The Gates Rubber Co. v. Bando Chemical Industries, Ltd. , 9 F.3d 823 ( 1993 )

Hoechst Diafoil Company v. Nan Ya Plastics Corporation , 174 F.3d 411 ( 1999 )

Hogan Systems, Inc. v. Cybresource Int'l., Inc. , 158 F.3d 319 ( 1998 )

Trandes Corporation v. Guy F. Atkinson Company, and ... , 996 F.2d 655 ( 1993 )

melvin-m-zelinger-doing-business-as-public-distributing-company-v-uvalde , 316 F.2d 47 ( 1963 )

Idx Systems Corporation v. Epic Systems Corporation, ... , 285 F.3d 581 ( 2002 )

learning-curve-toys-incorporated-plaintiff-counter-defendant-appellee-v , 342 F.3d 714 ( 2003 )

Donald R. Wild and Diana H. Wild v. Subscription Plus, Inc. , 292 F.3d 526 ( 2002 )

George Scharmer v. Carrollton Manufacturing Company , 525 F.2d 95 ( 1975 )

Precision Plating & Metal Finishing Inc., Plaintiffs-... , 435 F.2d 1262 ( 1970 )

Metallurgical Industries Inc. v. Fourtek, Inc., Irving ... , 790 F.2d 1195 ( 1986 )

mto-maritime-transport-overseas-inc-cross-appellant-v-mclendon , 837 F.2d 215 ( 1988 )

Dsc Communications Corporation Dsc Technologies Corporation,... , 107 F.3d 322 ( 1997 )

Confold Pacific, Inc. v. Polaris Industries, Inc. , 433 F.3d 952 ( 2006 )

Hicklin Engineering, L.C., Cross-Appellee v. R.J. Bartell ... , 439 F.3d 346 ( 2006 )

Syntex Ophthalmics, Inc. And Arapahoe Chemicals, Inc. v. ... , 701 F.2d 677 ( 1983 )

Rockwell Graphic Systems, Incorporated v. Dev Industries, ... , 925 F.2d 174 ( 1991 )

Composite Marine Propellers, Inc., Cross-Appellant v. ... , 962 F.2d 1263 ( 1992 )

Shellmar Products Co. v. Allen-Qualley Co. , 87 F.2d 104 ( 1936 )

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