On March 10, 2026, the First Department issued a decision in SKYX Group Inc. v. Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, 2026 NY Slip Op. 01330, holding that a plaintiff’s failure to protect its alleged secrets barred a theft of trade secrets claim, explaining:
Plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action for the misappropriation of trade secrets because the complaint fails to allege that plaintiffs took sufficient precautionary measures to ensure that the information remained secret. Plaintiffs voluntarily emailed the December Proposal to defendants without obtaining contractual assurances of secrecy. In a proposed second amended complaint, plaintiffs allege that they understood there to be a confidential relationship between the parties and assumed defendants would maintain confidentiality as a matter of business ethics, but they fail to allege any concrete, enforceable confidentiality obligation agreed to by defendants apart from vague references to the importance of confidentiality. Defendants later guaranteed the confidentiality of formal submissions to the February RFP, but those guarantees did not protect the already disclosed December Proposal.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).