What happens if you go to court to protect a secret… and can’t clearly show what the secret is?
That was, in essence, the problem in Applied Predictive Technologies v. MarketDial et al, a U.S. trade secrets case that ended, not with a narrow loss, but with a complete collapse of the claimant’s position.
APT alleged that its former consultants had misappropriated confidential information when forming a competing business. On paper, it looked like a classic trade secrets claim: access to sensitive material, a subsequent competing product, and an inference of misuse.
But trade secret law has a fundamental requirement that is sometimes underestimated: you must identify, with precision, the trade secret you are trying to protect, and you must support its existence with evidence.
In this case, the court found that APT had failed to do so. Rather, it had sought to establish its trade secret claim by keeping it undefined and ambiguous without ever meaningfully disclosing the specific secret it sought to protect. After extensive proceedings, the judge concluded that there was no meaningful evidentiary basis for the alleged trade secrets and no proof of misappropriation. The claim was dismissed, and APT was ordered to pay substantial legal costs.
What went wrong?
At its core, the case illustrates a recurring problem in trade secret litigation, namely, diffuse, poorly documented information. The claimant could not clearly demonstrate:
- what specific information constituted the secret;
- when it existed in that form;
- who had access to it;
- what, if anything, was disclosed to the defendants.
Without that evidential foundation, the legal claim simply could not stand.
How to do it right
Now consider how a platform like Etched might have changed the situation.
By its nature, Etched creates a structured, immutable record of materials and interactions. Ina trade secrets context, that could include:
- defined datasets or documents, fixed at specific points in time;
- records of who accessed those materials, and when;
- logs of disclosures made under controlled conditions.
Instead of attempting to define a trade secret retrospectively in broad or abstract terms, a claimant could point to specific, time‑stamped artefacts and a clear history of access and use.
Equally, for a defendant, such a system could serve a defensive function. It could demonstrate that:
- certain materials were never accessed;
- development occurred independently;
- no misuse of confidential information took place.
Trade secret cases are often fact‑intensive and evidentially challenging, precisely because the subject matter is intangible and deliberately concealed. Courts frequently rely on circumstantial evidence and inference. But as this case shows, where the evidential foundation is weak, even a superficially strong claim can fail entirely.
That is where a system like Etched sits - not as a legal tool, but as evidential infrastructure.
Because in the end, whether the issue is copyright, AI authorship, or trade secrets, the same principle keeps emerging: If you cannot clearly show what existed, who knew about it, and how it was used, the law may not be able to help you.
In that sense, APT v. MarketDial is a powerful illustration of a broader point: legal rights in intellectual assets are only as strong as the evidence that defines and supports them.
It’s not hush, hush.
