E. I. duPont deNemours & Co. v. Christopher’s Empirical Analysis
431 F.2d 1012 · 1970
Citation profile
23 federal appellate · 2 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2024 · most notably Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp. (1974), Desnick v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (1995)
23 federal appellate · 2 district · 7 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Hyde Corporation v. Huffines · K & G Oil Tool & Service Co. v. G & G Fishing Tool Service · K & G Tool & Service Co. v. G G Fishing Tool Service · Furr's Inc. v. United Specialty Advertising Company
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... we realize that industrial espionage of the sort here perpetrated has become a popular sport in some segments of our industrial community. However, our devotion to free wheeling industrial competition must not force us into accepting the law of the jungle as the standard of morality expected in our commercial relations. Our tolerance of the espionage game must cease when the protections required to prevent another’s spying cost so much that the spirit of inventiveness is dampened. Commercial privacy must be protected from espionage which could not have been reasonably anticipated or prevented. We do not mean to imply, however, that everything not in plain view is within the protected vale, nor that all information obtained through every extra optical extension is forbidden. Indeed, for our industrial competition to remain healthy there must be breathing room for observing a competing industrialist. A competitor can and must shop his competition for pricing and examine his products for quality, components, and methods of manufacture. Perhaps ordinary fences and roofs must be built to shut out incursive eyes, but we need not require the discoverer of a trade secret to guard against the unanticipated, the undetectable, or the unpreventable methods of espionage now available. To require DuPont to put a roof over the unfinished plant to guard its secret would impose an enormous expense to prevent nothing more than a school boy’s trick. We introduce here no new or radical ethic”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[o]ne may use his competitor's secret process if he discovers the process by reverse engineering applied to the finished product.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“One who discloses or uses another's trade secret, without a privilege to do so, is liable to the other if 5 (a) he discovered the secret by improper means, or 6 (b) his disclosure or use constitutes a breach of confidence reposed in him by the other in disclosing the secret to him * * *.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.