A Winning Combination: Recent Decisions Signal Strengthened Protectability of Compilation and Combination Trade Secrets

For companies in many industries, their most valuable trade secrets reside not in a single formula or document, but in years of accumulated data, coordinated processes, and combinations of technical and commercial information from various internal sources. Engineering know-how (including negative know-how), integrated software features, and customer databases can reflect years of investment and work effort and give competitors a shortcut if acquired improperly and used. Compilation and combination trade secret protection helps safeguard that collective value, even when some individual components are publicly known or unprotectable standing alone.

The federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) adopted by most states expressly include “compilation” within the definition of “trade secret,” and The Sedona Conference’s recently-released DTSA model jury instructions include Model Instruction 3.4 directed to evaluating the existence of combination and compilation trade secrets. Although the protectability of compilation and combination trade secrets has long been recognized, courts often reach scattershot conclusions on what a plaintiff must do to prove their existence and what it means to improperly acquire and use them. For example, even The Sedona Conference was unable to propose a single DTSA Model Instruction 4.3 regarding “use” of a combination or compilation trade secret, recognizing a split in courts (even within circuits) on whether use requires “all elements” or only a “substantial portion.”

Recent decisions from courts across the country in all phases of litigation impart key lessons to trade secret owners (and defendants) and reinforce that courts and juries understand that combination and compilation trade secrets remain an important tool in protecting a company’s most valuable assets, even when those assets do not neatly fit into circumscribed buckets of traditionally protectable information.

No Heightened Knowledge Requirement for Disclosure or Use of Combination Secrets

In Versata v. Ford, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in May 2026 affirmed a decision from the Eastern District of Michigan denying Ford’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law (“JMOL”). The decision followed a jury verdict finding liability for misappropriation of three interdependent combination trade secrets involving vehicle configuration software features (a user interface “Grid,” a “Buildability” part combination generator, and “Workspaces” allowing shared remote access). Ford argued that Versata had not shown that Ford knew of the specific combination trade secrets before litigation when Versata disclosed them or when Ford used them. Instead, Versata disclosed hundreds of documents to Ford allegedly containing the combination trade secrets.

The Federal Circuit rejected Ford’s proposed heightened knowledge requirement, holding that neither the DTSA nor the Michigan UTSA requires proof of a defendant’s specific knowledge that individual components combine to form a trade secret at the time of disclosure or use. The Federal Circuit also drew support from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which rejected the proposition that plaintiffs must prove acquisition of “each atom” of a combination secret. Instead, the Federal Circuit agreed with the district court that testimony from expert and fact witnesses pointing to user guides, presentations, manuals, technical documents, emails, onsite discussions, and the software itself that collectively disclosed each element of the combination trade secrets, and that Ford’s employees had the technical expertise to understand the materials, was sufficient to support a finding of liability.

Components of Compilations Need Not Be Stored Together, Nor Individually Have Economic Value

Following a criminal DTSA trial convicting an ex-Google engineer of theft of artificial intelligence supercomputing trade secrets, a judge in the Northern District of California in U.S. v. Ding, in June 2026, rejected post-trial challenges to a jury’s finding of the existence and misappropriation of four combination trade secrets comprised of information found within groups of documents. Ding argued that a combination could qualify as a trade secret only if Google maintained the documents in that particular arrangement in the ordinary course of business. The court disagreed and further noted that a trade secret owner might deliberately silo information to reduce the risk of theft.

Ding also argued that the prosecution had not proved that each document within each combination had independent economic value, but the Court disagreed that the law imposed such a requirement. Instead, the court credited testimony that the documents in each category, considered together, revealed information beyond what was contained in an individual document. For example, one combination of documents revealed how different generations of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) compared and how different components of TPU systems are used together. The court also disagreed that the prosecution had to prove how each document added to the value of the combination, noting that adding one superfluous document does not render the collection unprotectable.

Plausible Pleading in the Complaint is Sufficient

Several decisions from district courts within the Ninth Circuit highlight the importance of sufficiently pleading combination and compilation trade secrets and misappropriation thereof in the complaint.

In Precision Conversions v. Mammoth Freighters, a magistrate judge in the District of Oregon in July 2026 recommended denying a motion to dismiss a complaint alleging misappropriation of a compilation of engineering, testing, and qualification data developed to obtain Federal Aviation Authority (“FAA”) approval to convert decommissioned passenger aircraft into cargo planes. The court rejected defendants’ argument that the data compilation did not qualify as a trade secret, noting that Precision sufficiently plead that it spent five years, tens of millions of dollars, and over eighty engineers to develop the data, was one of only a handful of companies with the FAA certification, and demanded tens of millions to conduct passenger-to-cargo conversions and to license the data. The court also disagreed that Precision needed to allege misappropriation of every component of the compilation in the complaint instead of citing to a handful of misappropriated components because “taking enough of the individual parts must amount to misappropriation of the underlying secret at some point;” otherwise, statutory protection of compilation trade secrets would be rendered hollow.

In Apollo Information Systems Corp. v. John, a judge in the Northern District of California in September 2026 denied a motion to dismiss a complaint alleging misappropriation of combination trade secrets related to a cybersecurity product consisting of six unique features and types of information. Of particular note, the court rejected defendants’ argument that “merely processing, interpreting, and analyzing raw data into functional data” is not a protectable trade secret and instead found that transforming disparate sets of raw data (even licensed data) and compiling it into a set of functional data that is independently economically useful can be protectable.

Compilations of Commercial Information Remain Protectable

Several recent post-trial decisions solidify the protectability of compilations of business information and commercial data, so long as the value and secrecy of the compilation is sufficiently explained.

In Silver Fern Chemical v. Lyons following a jury verdict finding misappropriation of a trade secret compilation of customer information, a judge in the Western District of Washington denied a renewed JMOL motion in August 2026. The court disagreed that Silver Fern had to identify a single list or document containing the compilation, explaining that protection does not depend on the information’s form and that witnesses sufficiently identified the compilation’s contents and locations within internal systems. As to secrecy, the court noted that the proper inquiry is not just whether identities of customers and vendors were public, but whether “a compilation includes multiple layers of specifics that have historically led to business with customers,” and credited testimony that the compilations took years to develop and provide a shortcut to successfully doing business with those customers.

In Bankers Life and Casualty v. American Senior Benefits, a judge in the Northern District of Illinois entered judgment against defendants in August 2026 following a bench trial in which Bankers Life alleged misappropriation of its client and lead lists. While the court credited defendants’ contention that “bare-bones” versions of the list were available for “pennies” through third parties, it instead found that the trade secret lists included additional non-public nuanced information, such as financial goals, precise income, insurance coverage, risk tolerance measures, product preferences, family priorities, personal aspirations, medical conditions, and attorney/accountant contacts. The court also noted that Bankers Life took numerous steps to protect its lists.

Practical Lessons

Though the facts and jurisdiction of each case may differ, these decisions signal increased flexibility by courts in evaluating compilation and combination trade secrets as commercially meaningful wholes rather than mechanically dissecting every component, both when evaluating the elements of trade secrecy and misappropriation by a defendant. Whether in a complaint, at trial, or on appeal, trade secret owners must be able to meaningfully articulate why a combination or compilation of information as a whole derives business value from its secrecy, regardless of the form in which it is stored internally and improperly acquired and used by a defendant. Just as importantly, a defendant faced with allegations of misappropriation of combination and compilation trade secrets should be mindful of when a plaintiff misses the mark or overreaches in their pleadings or fails to elicit sufficient evidence at trial.