![Claim No: IL-2025-000064 - [2025] EWHC 2545 (Ch)](https://backend.juristeca.com/files/emisores/logo_O3rEzCI.png){kind=logo}
Claim No: IL-2025-000064 - [2025] EWHC 2545 (Ch)
Fecha: 06-Oct-2025
Background
Background
I can take the factual background largely from the agreed case summary. The defendant is a data scientist who had been employed by the first claimant since 30 June 2021. He resigned on 24 March 2025 and has been placed on 12 months’ paid garden leave until 24 March 2026. The first claimant is an entity which researches and develops quantitative trading strategies. It is part of the G-Research group. Its intellectual property has been assigned to, and is owned by, the second claimant, which is an affiliated company of G-Research, incorporated under the laws of the Marshall Islands. On Friday 21 March 2025, the defendant accepted a job offer from one of G-Research’s principal competitors, Citadel Securities LLC. He resigned from the first claimant on Monday 24 March 2025. In the period immediately following the defendant’s resignation, it became clear to the claimants that the defendant had copied and misused information which the claimants contend contains confidential information and trade secrets. The defendant accepts that the text files and photographs which he copied contain a substantial amount of confidential information; but he contends that it was nonetheless not of trade secret quality, and that some of the information was in the public domain and so not confidential at all.
These proceedings commenced on 26 March 2025. The claimants contend that the defendant: (i) breached his contractual obligations under his employment contract; (ii) breached his equitable duties of confidence to the claimants, and/or regulation 3 of the Trade Secrets Regulations; (iii) misused the claimants’ confidential information; (iv) breached the fiduciary duties he owed to the claimants in respect of confidential information; (v) infringed the copyright in the claimants’ copyright works, contrary to Section 17 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988; and (vi) was (amongst other things) unjustly enriched at the first claimant’s expense.
On 27 March 2025, the claimants obtained (without notice) an imaging orderand injunctions(from HHJ Hacon). On the return date (3 April 2025), and by consent, Richards J granted the claimants an inspection order, and continued the injunctive relief. Execution of these orders revealed (among other things) that: (i) over a three day period between Saturday 22 and Monday 24 March 2025, the day that he resigned (and when he should have been at work), the defendant took 1,087 photographs which contain the claimants’ confidential information (as displayed on his laptop screen which was logged in remotely to the first claimant’s IT systems) using a personal iPad that had been given to him as a welcome gift by Citadel Securities just days before; and (ii) over a period of months, dating back to at least 17 July 2024, the defendant had created, and frequently amended, several text files in markdown format which contain the claimants’ confidential information. Over 400 of the photographs relate to ‘Humber’, which the claimants allege is a highly valuable trading strategy, only recently developed by the first claimant following the expenditure of significant time and resources. In the text files, the defendant repeatedly recorded that he could (amongst other things) “replicate” Humber for a competitor. The meaning of this is contested between the parties.
The claimants seek to protect themselves against what they contend would be the irreparable harm they would suffer if the defendant were allowed to join a competitor equipped with their confidential information. They seek a final injunction, extending for two years beyond the defendant’s contractual period of garden leave, as well as financial and other remedies.
The defendant denies liability and the claim to injunctive relief. In essence, whilst he admits taking the photographs and making the text files, he contends that the two activities took place completely separately. He contends that the text files were made to assist him with interview preparation, and no part of their contents has been disseminated. He alleges that the photographs were part of an aide memoire, and that he acted impulsively in taking them. The photographs were also never disseminated. The defendant generally denies that he has caused, or could cause, the claimants substantial harm. He denies that the claimants are entitled to injunctive relief, contending that such relief would place the claimants in a better position than they would have been had the defendant not misused their information.
There is an agreed list of issues comprising (with various sub-issues): (i) the duties owed by the defendant to the claimants; (ii) the defendant’s alleged breaches of duty; (iii) the claimants’ entitlement to injunctive relief, its nature and extent; and (iv) the financial remedies to which the claimants are entitled. Amongst the sub-issues identified under the breaches of duty issue are: (v) whether some or all of the information defined in the Confidential Schedule to the particulars of claim as ‘Confidential Information’ is (a) confidential information, (b)of a trade secret quality, and (c)copyright material; and (vi) to what extent the defendant has, from 1 June 2024 onwards, engaged in unauthorised access to, appropriation, and/or copying of any documents, materials, information or electronic files containing confidential information and/or copyright material belonging to the claimants (and/or had been making preparations to do so).
- Heading
- Introduction
- Background
- Case management issues
- Disclosure: legal principles
- The first three of these propositions may be distilled from McParland , the fourth from Lombard North Central , and the fifth from PRS v Qatar Airways Group
- Multiple, and overlapping, issues for disclosure should be avoided wherever possible
- Disclosure: Submissions, analysis and conclusions
- I have not yet decided whether this should form one of the issues for disclosure. But if it were to do so, then it would seem to me to eliminate all need for disclosure issue 4 since it makes it unnec
- To the claimants’ knowledge, the defendant could not have replicated Humber elsewhere. Accordingly, the claimants’ case with respect to any Springboard relief (insofar as it is based on the possibilit
- The defendant cannot see that this possibility has been considered by the claimants. The defendant is therefore concerned about the nature of any searches the claimants will have undertaken concerning
- Further, I consider that the claimants place too much emphasis upon the defendant’s own repeated assertions, in contemporaneous documents, that he could (and would) ‘replicate’ Humber (as reproduced a
- Expert evidence: legal principles
- The burden of establishing that expert evidence is both (i) admissible and (ii) reasonably required (in the sense that it is not just ‘potentially useful’ ) is on the party which seeks permission to a
- Barings is authority for propositions (1) and (2); Clifford for proposition (3); The RBS Rights Issue Litigation for proposition (4); British Airways for propositions (5) to (9); and Astex for proposi
- At p. 11, the tribunal described the respondents’ experts’ evidence as “ independent, impressively detailed and completely credible ,” and further that
- Ms Goodman submits that this arbitral decision demonstrates the utility of an expert in this type of assessment as lawyers are obviously ill-equipped to know, and the court will be ill-equipped to adj
- In Henderson & Jones Ltd v Salica Investments Ltd [2025] EWHC 475 (Comm) , Calver J (at paragraph 236) is said to have ordered expert evidence to assist in determining “ (i) whether the allegedly conf
- The decision tells the court nothing about whether or not expert evidence should be ordered in a case governed by the Civil Procedure Rules. That case involved an arbitration. Mr Craig KC rightly says
- Practical utility of confidential information The defendant proposes to rely on the expert evidence of Mr Colin Knight, a qualified trader with over 20 years’ experience in trading strategies. Ms Goodman points out that algorithmic trading was ac
- The claimants have themselves relied on the expert report of Mr Winrow to analyse the coding data extracted from the defendant’s electronic devices, as evidenced by A & O Shearman’s letter of 5 Septem
- It is the claimants who bear the burden of proof in this case, which concerns the nature, and value, of technical descriptions of algorithmic trading strategies and actual code. They are required to p
- Stage in trading strategy development – identifying which stage in the trading strategy development process each piece of ‘confidential information’ (as defined in the particulars of claim) pertained
- The assertion that there are a certain number of stages in the development of a trading strategy at G-Research is the defendant’s own construct , in the sense that it is not said to be a framework ref
- Public domain assessment – assessing whether the ‘confidential information’ was, as a matter of fact, generic and/or widespread industry knowledge within the field of quantitative investment, such tha
- The claimants emphasise that the defendant well knows that the information in issue in this case is not generic and/or widespread industry knowledge. That is precisely why he admits to saying (in an u
- Valuation of confidential information – determining the value of the ‘confidential information’ to a competitor, including with reference to various dates The claimants’ case is that the defendant well knows that Humber is highly valuable: see the co
- Retention of value – Assessing whether, and to what extent, the ‘confidential information’ is likely to retain its value over time, including over a one-year period of garden leave Quite apart from the disproportionate nature of the exercise (not lea
- Practical utility of confidential information – Assessing whether, and to what extent, other businesses (including Citadel Securities) could utilise the ‘confidential information’ in their business ac
- If material at all, this is a question of fact; but, in any event it is extremely difficult to understand how an expert would be able to opine on this matter: it suggests that there would be some reco
- Stage in trading strategy development The claimants submit that the assertion that there are a " number of stages in the development of a trading strategy " is a mere construct. The defendant contends that there is a logical difference be
- Public domain assessment
- The defendant submits that, at most, he referred to Humber at the highest degree of generality, and that the summary to which the court was referred was of minimal value. The parties are, accordingly
- Valuation of confidential information At paragraph 3 of their particulars of claim, the claimants plead that the claim " concerns the defendant's misuse and copying of the claimants' extremely valuable and sensitive confidential informati
- Retention of value Even if the defendant had the requisite knowledge and ability to ‘replicate’ Humber, establishing when Humber is likely to lose its value (through the process of alpha decay) will be the primary consi
- Practical utility of confidential information Conclusions