Court Opinion

ID: 9473348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:27:24.800923+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:28.689486
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
I agree with all of Judge Mansfield’s thorough and well-reasoned opinion except that part pertaining to the customer lists lifted, so to speak, from the Defiance-NY computer’s memory. The lifting was done, it seems to me, by artifice. The diskettes containing the lists were kept in a safe in a locked room. While the lists were in the computer’s memory, it was coded so that the password “LSOLD” had to be given to the computer to obtain a printout. Only the controller and the computer operator, Rita Colletto, knew the code, though it was *1065in the source book, and did not even know about the auction when Chalfin contacted her to come in and operate the computer. Their testimony differed, he saying that she chose the customer list diskette, she that he asked her to run off the list of customers. Peel-off labels were not available, so she set up the machine for doing them, according to her testimony, and a day or two later Chalfin called her by telephone to ask her how to get it working and she told him. In essence C & C argues, and the court decides, that if a coded list is left in the computer’s memory and.the codeword is in a source book which is not under lock and key, the trade secret is abandoned, even if the codeword is obtained through an unwitting operator rather than the source book. I disagree, think it was obtained by improper means, Restatement of Torts § 757 (1939), and would reverse on this point accordinglyShe had been retired