EagleBurgmann v. Bernstein — Court Refuses to Dismiss Trade Secret Claims Against Departing Employee Who Emailed Confidential Data to Personal Account

Background

EagleBurgmann Industries, a global provider of industrial sealing technology, employed Michael Bernstein as a territory manager from December 2017 to July 2025. In that role, Bernstein served as a senior salesperson managing accounts across multiple U.S. regions and had access to confidential business information, including customer data, pricing strategies, and sales volumes.

In February 2023, Bernstein signed a Confidentiality, Non-Disclosure, Restrictive Covenant, and IP Ownership Agreement that included one-year non-competition and non-solicitation covenants. The agreement provided a salary increase, continued access to confidential information, and continued employment as consideration.

Bernstein left EagleBurgmann in July 2025. Before departing, he forwarded hundreds of emails — including messages containing confidential, proprietary, and trade secret information — from his company account to his personal Gmail. He also deleted over 1,000 emails from his company inbox, permanently removing more than 100 from his deleted items folder. Ten days after leaving, his counsel informed EagleBurgmann that Bernstein was joining Precision Services Industrial Group (PSIG), a direct competitor. Despite EagleBurgmann’s warning that the non-compete remained enforceable, Bernstein took the position and allegedly began soliciting EagleBurgmann’s customers.

The Court’s Holding

Magistrate Judge Ho denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in its entirety, sustaining EagleBurgmann’s claims for breach of contract, trade secret misappropriation under both the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA), and tortious interference.

Non-compete enforceability: The court found that EagleBurgmann adequately pleaded that the restrictive covenants were supported by valid consideration — including a salary increase, continued disclosure of confidential information, and continued employment — rejecting defendants’ argument that these were illusory promises.

Trade secret identification: The court held that EagleBurgmann identified its trade secrets with sufficient particularity, pointing to specific categories including profit-and-loss information, customer lists and contacts, pricing strategies, sales data, product specifications, and negotiation strategies. This was more specific than the vague catch-all categories that courts have found insufficient, and requiring even greater detail at the pleading stage would risk revealing the very secrets the suit aims to protect.

Trade secret misuse: The court found that allegations of forwarding confidential emails to a personal account, deleting company records, and then soliciting the employer’s customers using proprietary pricing and sales information were sufficient to plead misappropriation — even without direct evidence of how the trade secrets were used, which courts commonly accept at the motion-to-dismiss stage when a departing employee copies files before joining a competitor.

Key Takeaways

• Email forwarding is a red flag courts take seriously. An employee sending hundreds of confidential emails to a personal account before joining a competitor — combined with mass deletion of company emails — creates a strong inference of misappropriation at the pleading stage.
• Trade secrets need categories, not blueprints. At the motion-to-dismiss stage, a plaintiff need only identify trade secrets by category (e.g., “customer pricing information,” “sales volume data”) rather than disclosing the specific content. Demanding more could undermine the very protections the lawsuit seeks to enforce.
• Non-competes with multiple forms of consideration survive challenge. Under Texas law, a salary increase plus continued access to confidential information plus continued employment can together provide adequate independent consideration for a restrictive covenant — even when each element individually might be debatable.

Why It Matters

This decision reinforces the viability of trade secret litigation against departing employees who engage in data exfiltration before joining competitors. For employers, it confirms that documenting an employee’s digital trail — email forwarding patterns, deletion activity, and subsequent competitive conduct — can establish a plausible misappropriation claim without needing to prove exactly how the information was used. For employees considering a move to a competitor, it underscores the legal risk of forwarding company files to personal accounts, even if the information is never demonstrably “used” in the new role.