M-I LLC v. Stelly

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that plaintiff’s unfair competition by misappropriation claim that alleging defendant used, without permission, plaintiff’s tool design drawings to make a competing a product was preempted
• finding that technical drawings of tools fall within copyright protection and collecting cases where circuit and district courts have determined that architectural and engineering drawings constitute copyrightable material
• applying Texas law and concluding that restriction limited to oilfield displacement tools/services was not an industry-wide ban
• To the extent tortious interference claim is based on losing business “that would otherwise flow from its exclusive use of [copyrightable material],” it is preempted
• “Covenants with wide geographic areas have been upheld frequently in Texas courts, especially when the area covered constitutes the employee’s actual sales or work territory.”
• “[T]he additional element in trade secret misappropriation, which requires either a breach of confidential relationship or discovery by improper means regulates conduct qualitatively different from that regulated by federal copyright law.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).