Vesta Corp. v. Amdocs Management Ltd.

147 F. Supp. 3d 1147, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159883, 2015 WL 7720497
District Court, D. Oregon·Decided November 30, 2015·No. No. 3:14-cv-1142-HZ·Published·Cited by 40 cases

Opinion

OPINION & ORDER

HERNÁNDEZ, District Judge

This is a breach" of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets case. The parties are in a dispute over discovery. Defendants ask for a protective order to excuse them from responding to any discovery requests relating to the “Confidential Solutions Methods,” until such time as Plaintiff provides full and complete responses identifying its trade i secrets with reasonable particularity. Defendants also seek an order compelling Plaintiff to amend its responses to Interrogatory Nos. 1 and 16 (and the responses incorporating those Interrogatories’ responses) to identify with reasonable particularity the trade secrets [1149] that it disclosed to Defendants, an order striking various objections and answers to Interrogatory Nos. 15 and 16, arid an order requiring Plaintiff to identify all trade secrets it disclosed to Defendants.

For the reasons stated below, Defendants’ motion is granted in part. -Most importantly, the Court grants Defendants’ motion for a protective order excusing them from responding to any discovery related to the “Confidential Solutions Methods,” until such time as Plaintiff identifies with reasonable .particularity the trade secrets it allegedly disclosed to Defendants.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Vesta, an electronic payments and fraud prevention technology company, has sued Defendants Amdocs Management Limited and Amdocs, Inc. (collectively, “Defendants”), telephorie billihg software and services companies, for breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets. First Am. Compl. (FAC) Intro., ECF 52. Beginning in 2006,' the parties collaborated with one another to integrate their services and platforms -in order to appeal to their shared customer based. FAC ¶ 13. In 2009, the parties’ relationship became more strategic in nature as they worked to jointly market their respective services. Id. at ¶ 14. In addition, since 2010, Defendants twice approached Plaintiff about the possibility of Defendants acquiring Plaintiff. Id. Plaintiff and Defendants entered into a series of NonDisclosure/Confidentiality Agreements (NDAs) to preserve confidentiality while sharing information in their effort to develop joint services and products. Id. at ¶¶ 13-15. Now, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants breached these NDAs and stole trade secrets that were shared in the course of the collaboration.

Specifically, Plaintiff alleges that in the course of jointly collaborating on marketing and the possibility of acquisition of Plaintiff by Defendants, Plaintiff shared information with Defendants including “proprietary information about [Plaintiffs] payment- solution” and “confidential and proprietary business and financial information.” Id. at ¶ 17. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants obtained two types of confidential information from Plaintiff:

1) “Solutions Methods,” which include “detailed information about the architecture and design of the solutions, including proprietary payment routines, methodologies and processes,” and
2) “Risk Information,” which includes detailed statistical information about “the prevalence of fraudulent payment transactions in the prepaid mobile device market place” and how Plaintiff “uses fraud data to price its payment solutions.”

Id. at ¶¶ 22, 51.

The alleged stolen information “relates generally to proprietary software and fraud prevention technologies, consumer behavior analyses and service techniques created by [Plaintiff] and used to provide its electronic payment services to the national and international mobile phone industry.” FAC Intro. Plaintiffs First Amended Coriiplaint alleges, among other things, that Defendants stole a compilation of “Confidential Solution Methods,” defined as:

Detailed architectural drawings and sequence flow diagrams that depicted, on a step-by-step basis, how [Plaintiff] would design and implement its payment solution for Metro PCS ... [and] detailed information about how [Plaintiff] implements its system of direct customer notifications to optimize payments and customer retention, including detailed information about [Plaintiffs] proprietary “Text-to-Pay” system ... [and] detailed information about [Plaintiffs] [1150] customer relationship management tools, and how those tools serve to optimize customer loyalty and MNO revenues.

Id. at ¶¶ 32, 164-73.

On May 15, 2015, this Court entered a stipulated scheduling order providing that, by June 5, 2015, Plaintiff would answer Defendants’ interrogatories regarding the trade secrets allegedly misappropriated by Defendants. Scheduling Order, May 15, 2015, ECF 62. Throughout the summer, the parties communicated about the interrogatories and responses through meet and confer letters and discussions. Defs.’ Mot. Compel 8, ECF 105. On September 21, 2015, Defendants filed the present motion. Jd. The Court heard oral argument on Defendants’ motion on November 6, 2015.

STANDARD

Rule 26(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides in relevant part:

Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense— including the existence, description, nature, custody, condition, and location of any documents or other tangible things and the identity and location of persons who know any discoverable matter. For good cause, the court may order discovery of any matter relevant to the subject matter involved in the action. Relevant information need not be admissible at the trial if the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. All discovery is subject to the limitations imposed by Rule 26(b)(2)(C).

Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Among the limitations stated in Rule 26(b)(2)(C) is the direction that the court must limit the extent of discovery if it determines that “the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit, considering the needs of the case, the amount in controversy, the parties’ resources, the importance of the issues at stake in the action, and the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C)(iii). This is known as the “rule of proportionality.” In addition, Rule 26 provides that the court may, for good cause, issue an order to protect a party or person from oppression or undue burden, including “requiring that a trade secret or other confidential research, development, or commercial information not be revealed or be revealed only in a specified way.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1)(G).

DISCUSSION

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Vesta Corp. v. Amdocs Management Ltd., 147 F. Supp. 3d 1147, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159883, 2015 WL 7720497 (D. Or. 2015).

147 F. Supp. 3d 1147 (Vesta Corp. v. Amdocs Management Ltd.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related