Guest Post by Matthew D’Amore, Professor of the Practice, Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School.
Should a plaintiff in a trade secret case under the DTSA be required to detail its alleged trade secrets before discovery? Can a district court give the question of trade secret particularity to the jury? The Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in Quintara Biosciences v. Ruifeng Biztech rejects importing California’s pre-discovery “reasonable particularity” rule into the Defend Trade Secrets Act, reaffirming that federal law imposes no such up-front requirement. But while Quintara endorses an iterative identification process, it also embraces a problematic notion — that “reasonable particularity” is a fact question for the jury — creating new uncertainty for courts and litigants managing DTSA cases.
The Ninth Circuit’s August 12, 2025 opinion in Quintara Biosciences, Inc. v. Ruifeng Biztech, No. 23-16093, slip op. (9th Cir. Aug. 12, 2025), thus settles an important question in California trade secret practice under the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act. While California state law requires trade secret identification with “reasonable particularity” before discovery begins, no such obligation exists in the text of the DTSA. Thus, Quintara correctly reversed the district court’s determination to strike nine of eleven trade secrets from the case before discovery had begun.
However, in so doing, the Court (erroneously, in my view) created a different extra-textual requirement. Relying on dicta in an earlier case, the Court advised the parties and the lower court that on remand, the issue of trade secret particularity, while not a question for the pleadings, is “a fact question … that should be resolved on summary judgment or at trial.” Id. at 17-18. But the DTSA contains no particularity requirement on its face, and no basis to present that question to a jury to decide as an element of the statutory claim.
Rather than adding an element to plaintiff’s burden of proof, trade secret particularity should be viewed as a question of trade secret case management to refine and narrow the case before summary judgment and trial, so the actual elements of the claim can be addressed on their merits based on the trade secrets identified through that process.
What Happened
This case arises from a failed business relationship. Quintara and Ruifeng are California-based DNA-sequencing-analysis companies that worked together from 2013 to 2019. When the relationship soured in 2019, Quintara alleged Ruifeng locked it out of its office, took Quintara’s equipment, and hired Quintara employees; Quintara then sued under the DTSA as well as various state law claims, but did not include a claim under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act. It alleged nine trade secrets in its First Amended Complaint, including a customer database, a customer-profile database, marketing plans, vendor database, software code, customized reagents/protocols, product designs, and “DNA Donor technology.”
At the Rule 26(f) conference, the parties disputed whether Quintara had to identify its trade secrets with “reasonable particularity” prior to discovery, as Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 2019.210 would require for claims under the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Quintara initially disclosed little beyond its allegations in its Amended Complaint, and Ruifeng moved for a protective order blocking discovery pending a more particularized identification. The district court—citing § 2019.210—ordered Quintara to provide (1) a summary of each asserted secret, (2) how it derives independent economic value, (3) how secrecy is maintained, and (4) a numbered list of the precise claimed secrets “as claims would appear at the end of a patent.” Quintara filed an amended, sealed disclosure expanding the technical detail and subdividing two items into four separate secrets.
Ruifeng moved to halt discovery until further particularization. To end the standoff, the court gave Ruifeng a choice: accept Quintara’s disclosure and proceed with discovery, or move to strike and, if the motion fails, face extended discovery. Ruifeng chose to move to strike under Rule 12(f). The district court—acknowledging that § 2019.210 “does not govern” in federal DTSA cases but still invoked it to “nail down” the asserted secrets and set discovery bounds—striking nine of the eleven identified secrets, holding that only the customer-profile database and vendor database were sufficiently described, and directing the parties to proceed toward trial on those two. Quintara, Slip op. at 7 (quoting Quintara Biosciences, Inc. v. Ruifeng Biztech Inc., No. C 20-04808 WHA, 2021 WL 965349, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 13, 2021), rev’d and remanded). Quintara sought a writ of mandamus, arguing that the District Court’s reliance on § 2019.210 was clear error; the Court of Appeals denied the writ, finding that the circumstances did not warrant extraordinary relief. See In re Quintara Biosciences, Inc., No. 21-70913, Slip Op. BL-13 (9th Cir. June 8, 2021).
Discovery proceeded on the two surviving secrets. Quintara later abandoned the vendor-database theory, and a jury returned a verdict for Ruifeng on the remaining (customer-profile-database) trade secret.
What Quintara Got Right
On appeal from final judgment, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision on the motion to strike, finding that “unlike CUTSA, the federal DTSA does not require a plaintiff to identify with particularity its alleged trade secrets from the start.” Quintara, Slip op. at 5.
Relying heavily on InteliClear, LLC v. ETC Glob. Holdings, Inc., 978 F.3d 653, 657–58 (9th Cir. 2020), the Court observed that for Federal DTSA claims, “the conventional procedures under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply.” Quintara, Slip op. at 12. Given the “delicate problem” of highly confidential discovery exchanges trade secret cases often present, the Court noted that “for both sides, the conventional order of pleadings, initial disclosures, and first-round discovery may not be enough to set the stage for future factual development of a trade-secret claim. Discovery in a trade-secret case, then, requires an ‘iterative process where requests between parties lead to a refined and sufficiently particularized trade secret identification.’” Id. at 10-11 (quoting InteliClear, 978 F.3d at 662). Hence, “a DTSA trade-secret claim will rarely be dismissible as a discovery sanction in a situation like this,” where “[t]he district court’s dismissal of these trade secrets came early in the litigation and before an opportunity for discovery that would allow the parties to refine and clarify the identification of the alleged trade secrets at issue”. Id. at 17.
The iterative process adopted by the Ninth Circuit accords in many respects with the recommendations of the Sedona Conference in its Commentary on the Proper Identification of Asserted Trade Secrets in Misappropriation Cases. See The Sedona Conference, Commentary on the Proper Identification of Asserted Trade Secrets in Misappropriation Cases, 22 SEDONA CONF. J. 223 (2021). As Sedona sets forth, trade secrets should be identified “at an early stage of the case,” at a level of detail that is “reasonable under the circumstances.” Id. at 245-47. The Commentary specifically recommends a procedure for amending trade secret disclosures as the case proceeds. Id. at 263-4. Noting the “information asymmetry” that may exist in trade secret cases, where “a plaintiff may learn details about the claimed misappropriation, including a defendant’s internal technology or processes or dissemination of the information at issue, only during discovery,” where “amendments are based on facts that were newly learned (such as learning through discovery that a defendant has misappropriated a trade secret the plaintiff previously did not believe was at issue)… an amendment is more likely to be allowed.” Id.
Where Quintara Goes Off Track
Yet while the Ninth Circuit primarily relied on these procedural grounds to reverse the District Court, it also recited its view that the District Court improperly disposed of a factual issue on the merits. The Court asserted that “whether a DTSA plaintiff has identified information that is sufficiently particular to constitute a trade secret—information that is kept secret and derives value from not being generally known—is a question of fact. So whether a plaintiff has sufficiently particularized a trade secret under DTSA is usually a matter for summary judgment or trial.” Quintara, Slip op., at 5.
The Court directly grounds this interpretation on InteliClear. See Quintara, Slip op. at 9 (citing InteliClear for the proposition that “Whether a trade secret is identified with “sufficient particularity” is a question of fact.”); id. at 17-18 (“the reason for striking the trade secrets went to their merits: a fact question of ‘reasonable particularity’ that should be resolved on summary judgment or at trial. InteliClear, 978 F.3d at 658–59.”)
But here, the Court’s reliance on InteliClear ultimately does it a disservice, as InteliClear derived this requirement not from the DTSA, but from pre-DTSA case law. In InteliClear, the District Court below had granted summary judgment to defendant in a DTSA case on the ground that plaintiff had failed to identify its trade secrets with “sufficient particularity.” InteliClear, LLC v. ETC Glob. Holdings, Inc., 978 F.3d 653, 657 (9th Cir. 2020). The Court of Appeals reversed, instead finding “a genuine issue of material fact as to whether InteliClear identified its trade secrets with sufficiently particularity,” and that “[a] reasonable jury could conclude that the uniquely designed tables, columns, account number structures, methods of populating table data, and combination or interrelation thereof, are protectable trade secrets.” Id. at 659.
In so holding, the Ninth Circuit appears to have conflated two principles. First, it is absolutely correct that whether an alleged trade secret exists and is protectable is a fact question for the jury. Second, it is also correct that “[i]dentifying trade secrets with sufficient particularity is important because defendants need ‘concrete identification’ to prepare a rebuttal.” Id. (quoting Imax Corp. v. Cinema Techs., Inc., 152 F.3d 1161, 1167 (9th Cir. 1998)).
However, the DTSA’s definition of a trade secret – i.e., the basis for a jury’s determination of whether a trade secret exists – on its face contains no particularity requirement. “[T]he term ‘trade secret’ means all forms and types of … information … if (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by, another person who can obtain economic value from the disclosure or use of the information.” 18 U.S.C.A. § 1839(3). Instead, InteliClear decision’s importation of a particularity requirement as a question of fact relied almost exclusively on pre-DTSA cases under California’s Uniform Trade Secret Act, which expressly contains a statutory particularity requirement. See InteliClear, 978 F.3d. at 658 (citing cases from 1993, 1998, 2001, and 2012).
To the contrary, under the DTSA, as the Sedona Commentary points out,
Any court ruling on the sufficiency of identification of an asserted trade secret during a lawsuit is not a determination of whether the information is a trade secret or has been misappropriated. Identifying an asserted trade secret is a procedural notice issue—a drafting step to provide clarity so that merits issues can separately and later be determined in a facilitated manner.
Sedona Commentary, 22 Sedona Conf. J. at 243.[1] The Sedona Commentary’s view is echoed in the Federal Judicial Center’s Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide:
identification is solely a procedural tool to help manage trade secret cases. It is not an adjudication of the merits. Courts consistently hold that the identification requirement “does not create a procedural device to litigate the ultimate merits of the case—that is, to determine as a matter of law on the basis of evidence presented whether the trade secret actually exists.”
Menell, et. al., Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide, Federal Judicial Center (2023) at 4.2 (quoting Uni-Systems, LLC v. U.S. Tennis Ass’n, 2017 WL 4081904, at *4 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 13, 2017)).
What then, is the purpose of trade secret identification? Are courts and defendants unable to use these principles “to prevent plaintiff from indulging in shifting sands”, as the Quintara District Court feared? See Quintara Biosciences, Inc. v. Ruifeng Biztech Inc., No. C 20-04808 WHA, 2021 WL 965349, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 13, 2021), rev’d and remanded, No. 23-16093, Slip Op, (9th Cir. Aug. 12, 2025).
No. It remains Plaintiff’s burden to prove that a protectable trade secret exists, based on the trade secrets identified and refined through fact discovery. By the time of expert discovery, Plaintiff’s identification of allegedly misappropriated trade secrets should be precise and fixed, ideally following the principles on specificity outlined by the Sedona Conference. Plaintiff must then prove that its secrets, as stated, have been protected by reasonable measures of secrecy, are not generally known or readily ascertainable to those who could derive economic value from their use, and have economic value deriving from their secrecy, all as the DTSA requires. A Plaintiff who plays games and articulates an overly broad or imprecise definition should be held to its stated identification at summary judgment and trial and will likely find itself unable to meet these requirements.
This of course requires active case management by the Court, as well as diligence by both Plaintiffs and Defendants. Yet the alternative proposed by the Quintara and InteliClear decisions creates new element for DTSA claims out of whole cloth, and then leaves it to District Courts to somehow charge a jury on this new requirement, with no legislative basis to do so. The Sedona Commentary and the Federal Judicial Center offer a more balanced and statutorily sound approach, properly treating identification as a question for discovery and pretrial case management.
Note: The author is a member of the Sedona Conference Working Group 12 on Trade Secrets. The views are the author’s alone.
[1] See also Matthew D’Amore, Boeing Ruling Is a Cautionary Tale for Trade Secret Litigants, Law360.com, September 24, 2024. On August 14, the Ninth Circuit reversed the Zunum v. Boeing case for, among other reasons, the district court’s erroneous grant of judgment as a matter of law to Boeing based on the sufficiency of Zunum’s trade secret identifications. See Zunum Aero Inc. v. The Boeing Company, No. 24-5212, Slip Op., Dkt. Entry 54.1 (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2025).