Trade Secret Matters

A trade secret is never examined, published, or registered by any government office. It exists only for as long as it stays secret — and once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. In a state like Florida where employees change jobs often and a company’s most valuable information can leave on a laptop, a phone, or a personal cloud account in seconds, how a trade secret is protected — and enforced — matters as much as what it is.

Our patent, trademark, and trade secret attorneys counsel Florida businesses on protecting confidential information and pursuing misappropriation claims under the Federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, Florida’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and Florida’s Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act.

What Is a Trade Secret, and Where Does the Law Come From?

From common law to three overlapping statutes

Trade secret law began as a creature of the common law. Before 1979, the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 757 supplied most of the governing principles: a party was liable for using or disclosing information obtained by improper means, in breach of confidence, or with notice that it had been improperly acquired by someone else — provided the information was actually kept secret and gave its owner a real advantage over competitors who didn’t know it.

In 1979, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws proposed the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), broadening both the definition of a trade secret and the definition of misappropriation. Florida adopted its own version — the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Fla. Stat. ch. 688 — and federal law eventually followed: first with criminal-only protection under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, and then, in 2016, with the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which added the first federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation.

For a Florida business today, protecting and enforcing trade secret rights typically runs through three overlapping statutes at once:

• The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) — 18 U.S.C. § 1836 et seq. — a federal civil claim, available in federal court nationwide.
• The Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act (FUTSA) — Fla. Stat. ch. 688 — Florida’s state-law claim, nearly identical to the DTSA in substance.
• The Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act (CADRA) — Fla. Stat. §§ 668.801–.805 — aimed specifically at unauthorized computer access, which is how most modern trade secret theft actually happens.

Both the DTSA and FUTSA now share nearly the same two-part definition of a trade secret: information that (1) derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known or readily ascertainable by others who could profit from it, and (2) is the subject of reasonable efforts, under the circumstances, to keep it secret. That second element — what counts as “reasonable” — is where most trade secret disputes are actually won or lost.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act vs. the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act

Two statutes built from the same model act, with real differences

The DTSA and FUTSA share the same UTSA lineage, and their core definitions and remedies track closely. But they are not interchangeable, and the differences below frequently determine where — and how — a Florida trade secret case gets filed.

In practice, most Florida trade secret plaintiffs plead both statutes together in Federal Court: FUTSA supplies a state-law claim that doesn’t depend on the DTSA’s interstate-commerce hook, while the DTSA supplies the ex parte seizure remedy and a federal forum. Because DTSA doesn’t preempt state law, there’s rarely a reason to choose one over the other when both are available.

Elements of the Cause of Action

What a plaintiff has to prove under each statute

DTSA Civil Claim — 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(1)

• The plaintiff possessed information that qualifies as a trade secret under § 1839(3) — subject to reasonable measures to keep it secret, and deriving independent economic value from that secrecy.
• The trade secret is related to a product or service used in, or intended for use in, interstate or foreign commerce.
• The defendant misappropriated the trade secret under § 1839(5) — through improper acquisition, or unauthorized use or disclosure by someone who acquired it improperly or owed a duty of confidentiality.
• The misappropriation occurred on or after May 11, 2016 (the DTSA’s enactment date), including a continuing misappropriation that began earlier but continued after that date.
• The plaintiff suffered damage, or the defendant was unjustly enriched, as a result.

FUTSA Civil Claim — Fla. Stat. Ch. 688

• The plaintiff possessed information that qualifies as a trade secret under § 688.002(4) — of independent economic value from not being generally known, and subject to efforts reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.
• The defendant misappropriated the trade secret under § 688.002(2) — by improper means, or through breach of a confidential relationship, or by using or disclosing it without consent while knowing or having reason to know it was acquired improperly.
• The plaintiff suffered actual loss, or the defendant was unjustly enriched, as a result of the misappropriation.

Florida courts commonly compress this to two questions: did the plaintiff possess a trade secret and take reasonable steps to protect it, and was that secret misappropriated by improper means or breach of a confidential relationship.

The Rise of Trade Secret Theft — and Why Computer Access Is at the Center of It

National financial exposure, litigation trends, and Florida’s growing footprint

Trade secret theft is not a marginal risk. Government and industry estimates have consistently placed the cost to the American economy in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually:

Litigation activity backs up those estimates. Federal trade secret case filings reached an all-time high in 2025 — more than 1,500 cases, according to Lex Machina’s 2026 Trade Secret Litigation Report, up from 1,203 cases filed in 2023, itself an increase over the prior year. The share of those cases asserting DTSA claims has continued to grow, and state-law-only trade secret claims filed in federal court have also risen in each of the last two years. Jury verdicts from 2023 to 2025 awarded more than $716 million in actual damages and over $510 million in punitive damages across trade secret trials — and these cases resolve more slowly and settle less often than most other federal civil litigation, with a median of roughly 1,124 days from filing to trial.

Why computer access is the real story

The original version of this page described a customer list walking out the door on a flash drive. That risk hasn’t gone away — it has multiplied. The overwhelming majority of trade secret misappropriation traces back to insiders, not outside hackers: departing employees who sync a folder to a personal cloud account, forward files to a personal email address, or photograph a screen on the way out the door. Industry surveys report that a large majority of organizations — 83%, per Cybersecurity Insiders’ 2024 Insider Threat Report — experienced at least one insider threat incident in the prior year.

What changed is the scale a single act of misappropriation can now reach. A decade ago, exfiltrating a customer database meant physically copying files to a disk. Today, an entire engineering repository, pricing model, or client list can leave a company’s systems in the time it takes to sync a folder or send an email — often without triggering any alert until the information is already in a competitor’s hands. That shift is precisely why Florida’s computer-specific statute, CADRA, has become such a common companion claim to DTSA and FUTSA counts: when misappropriation happens through unauthorized computer access, the remedy doesn’t have to wait on a fight over whether the information legally qualifies as a “trade secret.”

Florida’s own exposure has grown alongside the national trend. The state’s continued growth as a relocation destination for technology, financial services, and life sciences companies, combined with high employee mobility and three active federal districts (the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida), means more Florida employers are litigating DTSA claims in federal court while relying on FUTSA and CADRA claims in parallel — tracking the same filings increase seen nationally.

Related Rights Under Florida’s Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act (CADRA)

A separate remedy for the intrusion itself, Fla. Stat. §§ 668.801–.805

CADRA, effective October 1, 2015, was enacted to give Florida businesses a civil remedy for unauthorized computer access — independent of whether the accessed information would separately qualify as a trade secret. It is frequently pled alongside DTSA and FUTSA claims for exactly that reason: it provides a remedy even where a defendant later argues that what was taken wasn’t truly “secret.”

is civilly liable to the computer’s owner, operator, or lessee, or to the owner of information stored on it. A “protected computer” is one used in connection with a business that stores information behind a technological access barrier — a password, security code, token, or similar control. “Without authorization” covers a person who isn’t an authorized user, who has stolen another user’s access credentials, or who circumvents an access barrier without the owner’s permission.

CADRA’s remedies, at § 668.804, are broader in kind than a typical trade secret statute: actual damages, disgorgement of the violator’s profits, injunctive relief, recovery of the misappropriated information, programs, or code — including all copies — and reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party. The statute carries its own three-year limitations period and includes exclusions at § 668.805 for categories of conduct the legislature chose not to reach (for example, access within the ordinary scope of otherwise-authorized use); whether an exclusion applies is a fact-specific question worth running past counsel before relying on it.

Because CADRA reaches the unauthorized access itself, it sits naturally alongside the two trade secret statutes discussed above rather than in competition with them — most Florida computer-related misappropriation cases plead all three together.

Remedies Compared: DTSA, FUTSA, and CADRA

What’s available, and under which statute

The practical takeaway: DTSA and FUTSA are close mirrors of each other on damages and fees, but the DTSA’s ex parte seizure provision has no state-law counterpart, and CADRA adds a computer-specific remedy — including recovery of the data itself — that doesn’t hinge on proving trade secret status at all. Most Florida misappropriation cases involving a computer, a departing employee, or an unauthorized login are strongest when all three statutes are considered together rather than in isolation.

Full Capability

Our Trade Secret Services Include