Mangren Research and Development Corporation v. National Chemical Company, Incorporated, and National Mold Release Company

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that, under Illinois law, “the user of another’s trade secret is liable even if he uses it with modifications or improvements upon it effected by his own efforts, so long as the substance of the process used by the actor is derived from the other’s secret”
• in a diversity case we apply the federal standard for judgment as a matter of law
• once former employee of plaintiff apprised new employer of plaintiff’s trade secrets and new employer made use of such trade secrets, new employer was liable for misappropriation under the ITSA
• jury instruction that “you do not have to find that defendants copied or used each 5 and every element of the trade secret” was “consistent with traditional trade secret law”
• “[I]f trade secret law were not flexible enough to encompass modified or even new products that are substantially derived from the trade secret of another, the protections that law provides would be hollow indeed.”
• “The user of another’s trade secret is liable even if he uses it with modifications or improvements upon it affected by his own efforts, so long as the substance of the process used by the actor is derived from the other’s secret.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).