The United States Appeals Court denied Cuker Interactive’s attempt to commence contempt proceedings against Walmart Inc., saying that Walmart had violated a court order banning it from utilizing its trade secrets. A trade secret is a type of intellectual property that protects the sensitive information that underpins your business and cannot be utilized by anyone else without your permission.
Cuker’s contempt motion was correctly dismissed by an Arkansas Federal Court, which stated that proving Walmart’s continued use of its secrets after getting a permanent injunction and a $3 million punishment required more for an expert’s intuition, according to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
based in San Diego Cuker previously assisted Walmart in building an online presence by designing its food websites to be mobile-friendly. Everything began when Walmart sued Cuker for breaching their contract terms immediately after their work began in 2014, and Cuker countersued against the alleged misappropriation of trade secrets.
In the year 2018, a federal judge ordered Walmart to do the following:
-Pay $750,000 in damages, $2.6 million in attorney’s fees, and other penalties.
-Cuker’s trade secrets must be permanently removed from the company’s computer system.
Cuker sought an Arkansas court in 2020, demanding that it hold Walmart in contempt for repeatedly disobeying the injunction. “Giving Easttom access to Walmart’s databases could lead to either a fishing expedition or a hunt for buried gold,” the court said, dismissing Cuker’s plea. As a result, the 8th Circuit concurred with the trial judge and dismissed Cuker’s appeal, stating that the company had woefully failed to prove that Walmart was breaching the court’s order. Walmart was represented in court by Susman Godfrey’s Neal Manne, while Cuke was represented by Larson LLP’s Stephen Larson.