Plaintiff Therapeutic Research Faculty brought suit in the Eastern District of California against defendants NBTY, Rexall Sundown, and Le Naturiste. Plaintiff alleged that NBTY had violated the terms of a single user license for plaintiff’s database by sharing access and information with its employees and with the other defendants. Defendants moved to dismiss eight of plaintiff’s claims: direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement; violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and the California Comprehensive Data Access and Fraud Act; trespass; and misappropriation of trade secret. The court held that violation of a single user license by allowing access to copyrighted content by multiple users constituted unauthorized access and infringed the exclusive rights of copyright holders, and that a confidential username and password can be a trade secret,and therefore denied the motion to dismiss.
Therapeutic Research Faculty v. NBTY, Inc., No. 2:05-cv-2322-GEB-DAD (E.D. Cal. Jan. 25, 2007)
