Opinion ID: 613100
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Challenge to the Panel's Misappropriation Determination

Text: For similar reasons, we reject appellants' contention that the Panel exceeded its authority by determining the inventorship of pending patent applications. One of the main issues driving the arbitration was each side's assertion that the other had misappropriated trade secrets relating to the DIXE technology. Given this posture, both parties clearly contemplated that the Panel would consider the inventorship and rightful ownership of aspects of that technology. The Panel ultimately concluded that Wells Fargo is the inventor and owner of all the DIXE Trade Secrets which DIXE Trade Secrets are set out within the documents entitled: (1) Digital Information Exchange DIXE Business Architecture and Technology Review, Version 2.0, dated August 19, 2003 and (2) The DIXE System Architecture, Version 2.0  Working Draft, dated October 16, 2003, Wells Fargo Evidentiary Hearing Exhibits WF DIXE-35 and WF DIXE-118, respectively, all of which were misappropriated from Wells Fargo by Synoran, Inc. and WMR e-Pin LLC. J.A. 000054 ¶ 7(a). After reviewing the record, we are satisfied that the Panel did not exceed its authority in resolving the issue of misappropriation in this fashion. Appellants claim that they never agreed to submit the issue of inventorship. But the record is replete with instances in which the appellants staked out their position that they are the rightful owners and inventors of aspects of the DIXE software and asked the Panel to acknowledge them as such. Wells Fargo points to a number of examples in the appellants' final briefing in which it claimed to have invented, created, or developed the technology and corresponding patents before Wells Fargo subsequently stole it. Moreover, as set forth above, in a section of the final briefing entitled Appropriate Remedies, appellants asked that the Panel find in their favor and enjoin Wells Fargo from further misappropriation and, in the alternative, invited the Panel to [d]ecline to exercise its jurisdiction to render a determination as to the ownership of the intellectual property in question. J.A. Ex. 000384. Thus, so long as the question of ownership and inventorship was left open, the appellants actively tried to sway the Panel in their favor. Though they suggested that the Panel might also decline jurisdiction, they did not contend that it should do so for other than prudential reasons and treated this as a secondary option. Appellants counter that the question of inventorship for pending patent applications is reserved exclusively to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) under federal law. See 35 U.S.C. § 135. Accordingly, appellants argue, even if the parties had agreed to arbitrate the issue of inventorship, the Panel lacked the power to resolve it. Moreover, appellants maintain that the Panel's decision conflicts with the conclusions of the USPTO in a subsequent interference proceeding in November 2008 in which the USPTO rejected a patent application from Wells Fargo. [7] Appellants assert that the USPTO's conclusions effectively invalidate the Panel's finding that Wells Fargo is the inventor and owner the DIXE software trade secrets at issue. We find that appellants read too much into the phrase inventor and owner in ¶ 7(a) of the Award and ignore the specific context of the dispute over misappropriation that the Panel was charged with resolving. The Panel concluded that appellants had misappropriated trade secrets related to a technology that they claimed to have invented and developed. At bottom, appellants' dispute is with the Panel's conclusion, not with the extent of the Panel's authority. Throughout the proceedings, appellants urged the Panel to exercise that same authority to declare that they owned and invented the technology in dispute. Mindful of the deference accorded to the arbitrators's decision, Crawford Group, Inc., 543 F.3d at 976, we will not second guess the Panel's determination that resolving the competing claims as to misappropriation made it necessary to consider who invented or developed the DIXE software. Appellants assumed as much by treating the question who invented or developed the software as a linchpin of the dispute over which party wrongfully misappropriated it. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court did not err when it declined to vacate the Award on the grounds that the Panel exceeded the scope of its arbitral mandate.