A hearing has been set to determine whether Tampa Bay Fisheries should have to hand over documents that National Fish & Seafood alleges it stole in the two suppliers’ ongoing trade secrets case.
At issue is National Fish & Seafood’s pushback against Tampa Bay’s “Motion to Compel,” which states that NFS needs to identify and disclose which trade secrets Tampa Bay allegedly took.
However, NFS has specifically identified its document productions as containing NFS trade secrets that it claims were “misappropriated, misused, or improperly disclosed by Tampa Bay or its employees,” the Matlaw’s manufacturer said in a recent court document.
“In short, there is simply nothing else for NFS to identify because it has already identified the relevant universe of trade secrets,” Michael Creta, an attorney for NFS, wrote in a recent filing with the U.S. District Court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Tampa Bay’s Motion to Compel “is a thinly veiled attempt to use a contrived discovery dispute to prematurely force NFS to prove Tampa Bay’s theft of trade secrets. Tampa Bay’s primary argument is nothing more than a bait-and-switch ploy where it supposedly raises the issue of trade secret identification whereas it actually raises the entirely distinct issue of trade secret misappropriation,” Creta wrote.
In fact, there is no genuine dispute regarding the identification of trade secrets relevant to NFS’ pending claims, according to NFS.
“Tampa Bay is fully aware of the exact trade secrets that NFS claims it stole because NFS produced all such trade secrets months ago. The discovery stage is not the appropriate time for NFS to prove its prima facie case. This Court should not be fooled by Tampa Bay’s ruse,” Creta wrote.
The hearing is set for 8 March in U.S. District Court in Boston.
