Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner

An employee who misappropriates trade secrets from his former employer's computer system is not liable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), absent a showing of "damage" or "impairment" to the database or computer system. Garelli Wong & Assoc. v. Nichols, No. 07-6227, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3288 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 16, 2008). The district court dismissed the plaintiff's CFAA claims based upon a failure to properly allege damage to its computer system, and declined to exercise jurisdiction over the plaintiff's remaining state law claims. The court held that misappropriation of a trade secret through the use of a computer alone does not, without more, constitute "damage" under the CFAA (i.e., "impairment to the integrity or availability of data, a program, a system, or information"). The court concluded that the defendant's unauthorized acts of copying and e-mailing proprietary computer files neither impaired the integrity of the plaintiff's database nor caused any interruption in service.

Opinion http://www.thelen.com/tlu/GarelliWongVNichols.pdf