The underlying dispute pits Cozzini Bros., Inc. — a provider of knife rental and sharpening services to restaurants, grocery stores, and commercial kitchens — against Cozzini Cutting Supplies, LLC, a rival established by a previous owner of Cozzini Bros. Cozzini Bros. alleges that CCS systematically hired its former route drivers and other employees to exploit their knowledge of customer identities, pricing agreements, and purchasing histories, and that CCS representatives actively deceived customers by telling them that Cozzini Bros. had undergone an ownership change and that CCS had taken over as their new cutlery provider. Cozzini Bros. estimates it lost at least 500 customers and approximately $809,000 in annual revenue as a result.
Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins of the Northern District of Illinois held that the trade secret claims under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, the Illinois Trade Secrets Act, and the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act all failed at the pleading stage because Cozzini Bros. did not define its alleged trade secrets with sufficient specificity. Citing the Seventh Circuit's statement in REXA, Inc. v. Chester that a plaintiff must define claimed trade secrets with a "high level of specificity," the court held that Cozzini Bros.'s general references to customer identities and pricing information did not identify concrete secrets or explain how that information is unique and protected.
The court contrasted the complaint with cases where plaintiffs survived dismissal by describing trade secrets with precision — such as a method for collecting standardized data, software design specifications, and impact reports and analytics in one case, or specific customer lists, supplier lists, combinations of materials necessary to create certain products and services, and marketing plans in another. Cozzini Bros.'s complaint, by contrast, alleged only that former employees remembered the businesses they had regularly visited and then contacted those customers for CCS at lower prices. The court noted that Cozzini Bros. also failed to meaningfully address CCS's argument that pricing information was disclosed to each customer without restriction — a disclosure that could extinguish trade secret protection. The court declined to reach Cozzini Bros.'s inevitable-disclosure argument because the threshold question of what the trade secrets actually were remained unanswered.
The tortious interference claim survived on different grounds. CCS argued the count was preempted by the ITSA, which displaces conflicting state tort claims for misappropriation of trade secrets. The court rejected that argument because the tortious interference claim rested on independent conduct — CCS representatives falsely telling customers that there had been an ownership change at Cozzini Bros. and that CCS had taken over and would be their new cutlery service provider — rather than solely on the misuse of confidential customer information. Because the claim did not wholly depend on the existence of misappropriated trade secrets, ITSA preemption did not apply.
All three trade secret counts were dismissed without prejudice. The motion to dismiss was otherwise denied.