ESHA Research, LLC — now known as Trustwell — sued RLH Assets, LLC, doing business as Foodwit, alleging that Foodwit used a licensing relationship to misappropriate the Genesis Foods software system and its underlying nutrition database, then built a competing product called Workbench. Genesis Foods, first introduced in 1991 and updated continuously since, automates food and supplement formulation, labeling calculations, and regulatory compliance, and is backed by a database covering nutritional data for more than 90,000 brand-name and generic foods across up to 172 data fields. ESHA alleges that Foodwit — a licensed user of Genesis Foods from 2017 until the license expired on August 29, 2024 — exported data and used proprietary features in ways the license did not permit, and that the only plausible explanation for building a competing platform from scratch within a year was misappropriation of trade secrets representing more than three decades of research and development.
Judge Amy M. Baggio of the District of Oregon held that ESHA's trade-secret claims under both the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and Oregon's Uniform Trade Secrets Act survive dismissal, as does the false-designation-of-origin claim under the Lanham Act and the breach-of-contract claim. The court dismissed ESHA's false-advertising claim and its Oregon Unlawful Trade Practices Act claim.
The decision turned on two threshold fights before reaching the merits. Foodwit argued that ESHA lacked standing because it had no cognizable trade secrets, and separately sought to incorporate discovery materials — including interrogatory responses — to prove the point at the pleading stage. Judge Baggio rejected both moves, relying on Ninth Circuit authority holding that whether a plaintiff has identified information with sufficient particularity to constitute a trade secret is a question of fact that belongs at summary judgment or trial, not at the pleading stage. The court declined to incorporate the interrogatory responses, finding they were offered purely as a defense to well-pleaded allegations and that considering them would convert the motion to dismiss into a summary judgment motion.
On the substance of the trade-secret identification, the court held ESHA's pleading adequate. ESHA described eight specific categories of proprietary features within Genesis Foods — including configuration options, nutrient-calculation formulas, label-generation capabilities, and import/export design — and separately alleged that the database is a compilation trade secret assembled through decades of investment and containing data not publicly available. That was enough at the pleading stage to separate the claimed secrets from matters of general knowledge and to give Foodwit notice of the boundaries of the alleged secrets.
The Lanham Act ruling split the difference. ESHA alleged both false designation of origin — a reverse-passing-off theory that Foodwit was marketing Genesis Foods as its own Workbench platform — and a separate false-advertising theory based on Foodwit's public statements that it legitimately built Workbench from scratch. Judge Baggio held that the false-advertising claim was a false-designation-of-origin claim in disguise: ESHA's core grievance was that Foodwit misrepresented someone else's goods as its own, which is precisely a reverse-passing-off claim under Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. The false-advertising count was therefore dismissed. The false-designation claim itself survived because ESHA alleges Foodwit copied Genesis Foods wholesale rather than taking it from the public domain, modifying it, and producing its own product — the latter scenario being what Dastar held does not support a reverse-passing-off claim.
The UTPA claim fell on a straightforward ground: Oregon's consumer-protection statute provides a cause of action only for consumers, and ESHA did not allege that it purchased or licensed Workbench. ESHA's complaint identified third-party customers as the deceived consumers, not itself, and that omission was fatal. Judge Baggio also denied leave to amend the dismissed claims as futile. Foodwit must answer the surviving claims within fourteen days.