Court Refuses to Give the Hook to The Nook - Preliminary Injunction Denied in E-Reader Trade Secrets Case

We first identified this Barnes & Noble "Nook" case here: http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.com/2009/11/spring-design-says-to-barnes-nobles.html.

You'll recall that Spring Design has sued Barnes & Noble and the lawsuit asserts Barnes & Noble misappropriated Spring Design's trade secrets and violated the parties' non-disclosure agreement when it copied Spring Design's features into its recently announced Nook e-book.

Spring Design moved for a preliminary injunction and that motion was denied yesterday.

The Court preliminarily found that "Spring Design has not presented sufficient evidence to show that Spring Design is likely to succeed on the merits. Moreover, Spring Design’s motion was heard on the day that Barnes & Noble launched its nook™ product, at which time Spring Design did not have a commercial product available. Thus, the requested preliminary injunction halting the saleof Defendant’s product would alter the status quo, not preserve it."

You can read the full order here: http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/spring-design-order.pdf. This is not the end of the case, folks. This federal judge was just convinced that an injunction stopping Barnes & Noble from marketing and selling its reader wasn't warranted because the court couldn't decide whose evidence made them more or less likely to win later on at trial and and an injunction wouldn't protect Spring Design's interests anyway because its e-reader device wasn't on the market. In other words, the injunction would tend to penalize Barnes & Noble but not benefit Spring Design and protect its real commercial interests.

We'll keep a nightlight on to watch and read about this one as it progresses.