## Facts

- Conmar Products Corporation manufactured zippers and developed machinery and processes it treated as trade secrets; employees signed nondisclosure agreements.
- Universal Slide Fastener Co., a competitor, hired several former Conmar employees and built a zipper-making machine incorporating seven items of Conmar’s confidential know-how.
- Universal was found to have been apparently unaware of the employees’ nondisclosure agreements when it hired them and developed its machine.
- Conmar owned two relevant patents issued in 1940 (Wintritz and Ulrich) concerning zipper element manufacturing and attachment methods; those patents disclosed six of the seven alleged trade secrets and part of the seventh.
- Universal had invested about $40,000 in its machine before receiving notice to stop using the alleged trade secrets.
- Later patents disclosed the remaining portion of the seventh alleged trade secret.
- Conmar sued for infringement of specified claims of the Wintritz and Ulrich patents and for inducing employees to disclose trade secrets, seeking damages and injunctive relief.

## Issues

1. Whether the asserted claims of Conmar’s Wintritz and Ulrich patents were valid and infringed by Universal’s machinery and process.
2. Whether Conmar could obtain trade-secret remedies for Universal’s use of information that Conmar had disclosed in its issued patents.
3. Whether Universal was liable for inducing Conmar’s former employees to breach confidentiality obligations, and whether equitable considerations limited any remedy.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of Conmar’s patent infringement claims as to the specified claims.
- The court held Universal’s accused machine did not infringe the asserted patent claims as properly construed in light of prior art.
- The court affirmed judgment for Universal on the trade-secret inducement claim and denied injunctive relief and damages.
- The court ruled that, once Conmar disclosed the alleged trade secrets in its issued patents (and later patents), Conmar could not restrain Universal’s continued use of that information through trade-secret or unfair-competition theories.
- The court also considered Universal’s substantial pre-notice investment and apparent good faith as weighing against the relief Conmar sought.

## Legal Principles

- Trade-secret protection depends on secrecy and duty-based confidentiality; it does not create an exclusive right against the public comparable to a patent.
- Disclosure of information in an issued patent ends trade-secret protection against others for the disclosed subject matter; continued control is limited to the patentee’s statutory patent rights, if any.
- A patentee cannot use trade-secret or unfair-competition law to obtain protection broader in scope or longer in duration than federal patent law allows once the information has been disclosed in patents.
- Equitable considerations may limit relief where a defendant developed and invested in technology in apparent good faith before notice and where the plaintiff’s patent disclosures placed the information in the public domain subject only to patent constraints.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of Conmar’s patent and trade-secret claims, holding that Universal did not infringe the asserted patent claims and that Conmar could not obtain trade-secret-based relief for manufacturing know-how that Conmar itself disclosed through its patents, particularly given Universal’s pre-notice investment and apparent good faith.


Conmar Prods. Corp. v. Universal Slide Fastener Co., 172 F.2d 150 (2d Cir. 1949)