Rivendell Forest Products, Ltd. v. Georgia-Pacific Corp.
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Rivendell Forest Prods. v. Georgia-Pacific Corp., 28 F.3d 1042 (10th Cir. 1994) was a case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, which had decided that Rivendell had failed to establish the existence of a trade secret in its customized computer software system, "Quote Screen", which was used to quote lumber prices to customers.[1]
Rivendell Forest Products and Georgia-Pacific Corp. | |
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Court | United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit |
Full case name | Rivendell Forest Products v. Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Timothy L. Cornwell |
Argued | Feb. 22 1993 |
Decided | Jun. 30 1994 |
Citation(s) | 28 F.3d 1042 |
Case history | |
Prior history | Rivendell Forest Products. v. Georgia-Pacific Corp., 824 F. Supp. 961 (D. Colo. 1993). |
Subsequent history | Rehearing Denied Aug. 1, 1994 |
Holding | |
Concepts and Public Knowledge can in fact constitute Trade Secrets when they are vital to a company's efficiency and success. | |
Court membership | |
Judge(s) sitting | Before Paul Joseph Kelly, Jr. and Oliver Seth, Circuit Judges, and Richard Owen, District Judge. |
The Tenth Circuit instead decided that Rivendell had demonstrated that its software was potentially protectable as a trade secret because "a trade secret can include a system where the elements are in the public domain, but there has been accomplished an effective, successful and valuable integration of the public domain elements and the trade secret gave the claimant a competitive advantage".[1]