/>iIn an August 12, 2025 decision, the Ninth Circuit emphasized important differences between the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“CUTSA”)—differences which might significantly influence trade secret holder strategies as to whether to bring both DTSA and CUTSA claims in a California action for misappropriation. In a ruling reversing a district court’s decision to dismiss claimed trade secrets for failing to meet the CUTSA’s trade secret identification standard at an early stage, the Ninth Circuit drew a bright line between the DTSA’s and the CUTSA’s timing requirements for trade secret identification.
The DTSA, enacted in 2016, created a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. The DTSA supplements state trade secret laws; it does not preempt them. The CUTSA, adopted in 1984, is California’s state law establishing a California civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. Under California Code of Civil Procedure section 2019.210, adopted as part of the CUTSA, “before commencing discovery relating to the trade secret, the party alleging the misappropriation shall identify the trade secret with reasonable particularity.” Although this provision is a California state court procedural statute, federal courts in California have often applied the same disclosure requirement to trade secret cases, typically under the auspices of the court’s inherent authority to manage discovery and control its docket. The Ninth Circuit has altered this practice, at least with respect to DTSA claims.
In Quintara Biosciences, Inc. v. Ruifeng Biztech, Inc., et al, a Ninth Circuit appellate panel overturned a district judge’s pre-trial decision to strike nine of eleven trade secrets that Quintara Biosciences alleged Ruifeng Biztech misappropriated. (This appellate reversal of a pre-trial decision followed a trial and verdict in Ruifeng’s favor.) Importantly, Quintara brought only one count of trade secret misappropriation under the DTSA, not the CUTSA. Yet the district judge struck Quintara’s alleged trade secrets by applying the disclosure requirement in section 2019.210 of the CUTSA. Relying in part on a district court’s broad discretion to tailor and control the sequence of discovery, the district court judge applied the CUTSA standard to Quintara’s DTSA claim, and determined that Quintara’s pre-discovery disclosure failed to adequately identify nine trade secrets under that standard, resulting in their removal from the case.
In reviewing the district court’s decision, the Ninth Circuit acknowledged that the DTSA and CUTSA are often brought in combination in federal trade secret litigation. Yet, in this case, Quintara only brought one count of trade secret misappropriation under the DTSA. And while the CUTSA’s “reasonable particularity” disclosure rule is similar to the “sufficient particularity” showing required to establish ownership of a trade secret under the DTSA, unlike the CUTSA, the federal DTSA does not require a plaintiff to identify with particularity its alleged trade secrets from the start, before discovery.
The Ninth Circuit emphasized the DTSA’s lack of requirements for the specific timing or scope of trade secret identification. Instead, under the DTSA, whether a plaintiff has identified a trade secret with “sufficient particularity” is a question of fact, which, according to the panel, should be resolved at summary judgment or trial, after discovery that would allow the parties to refine and clarify the identification of the alleged trade secrets at issue.
For these reasons, in Quintara, the Ninth Circuit held that the district court incorrectly relied on a California CUTSA rule that does not control a federal DTSA trade-secret claim. This might be viewed as a divergence from the Ninth Circuit’s 2020 decision in InteliClear, LLC v. ETC Global Holdings, Inc. (where both DTSA and CUTSA claims were brought). While InteliClear permitted refinement of early DTSA trade secret identifications through discovery, it did not dispense with the need for such pre-discovery identifications, instead holding “… where no discovery whatsoever had occurred . . . [Plaintiff’s] burden is only to identify at least one trade secret with sufficient particularity . . . .” Quintara, by contrast, states “the DTSA does not require a plaintiff to identify with particularity its alleged trade secrets from the start.”
The ramifications for California trade secret plaintiffs may be significant. In cases involving CUTSA claims, the CUTSA’s pre-discovery trade secret disclosure requirement often results in a battle between plaintiffs and defendants in early stages of litigation, frequently involving motion practice, as to whether the pre-discovery trade secret disclosure is adequate. This battle slows the progression of the case, because discovery cannot commence until the trade secret disclosure is deemed sufficient. In light of Quintara, however, to avoid the CUTSA’s statutory pre-discovery trade secret disclosure requirement, plaintiffs in California actions for trade secret misappropriation (or in other states that may apply rules similar to the California pre-discovery disclosure rule) may be incentivized to pursue only DTSA claims in federal courts, thereby potentially reducing their trade secret identification burden at the outset of litigation by attempting to avoid the CUTSA’s requirement. Defendants will still argue that discovery from them needs to be reasonably bounded and framed by notice of the trade secrets at issue, but the particularity needed for the initial identification of such trade secrets may be more lenient as a result of the Quintara ruling.
