02-2403 & 02-2470 McRoberts Software, Inc. v. Media 100, Inc.

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“Unlike the district court, we find that MSI presented ample evidence to support the jury’s award of damages for trade secret misappropriation. The jury was clearly instructed by the court as to how it should properly calculate damages for both trade secret misappropriation and copyright infringement. Once both parties approve the jury instructions, they become the law of the case, see Jabat, Inc. v. Smith, 201 F.3d 852, 857 (7th Cir. 2002), and we assume that the jury applies the law as given to them to the facts as they find them, see Pribyl, 259 F.3d at 587. Because the Comet/CG source code represented both a trade secret and a protectible copyright, much of the evidence presented at trial could have been used to substantiate damages for either one or both claims. Still, it is undisputed that the jury was instructed to consider different measures of damages in determining each award. In calculating trade secret damages, for example, the court told the jury to consider either ‘the cost Media 100 would have incurred in acquiring the same information or trade secret through its own experimentation or through other lawful means,’ or ‘the actual value of what has been appropriated or the reasonable royalty at the time of the misappropriation.’ The jury was also reminded that MSI had the burden of proving its damages ‘for actual loss [proximately] caused by the misappropriation’ by a preponderance of the evidence. In comparison, the instruction for computing copyright damages told the jury to determine ‘the amount of money adequate to compensate [MSI] for the reduction of the market value of the copyrighted work caused by the infringement,’ as measured by ‘the amount a willing buyer would have been reasonably required to pay a willing seller . . . for the use made by Media 100 of [MSI]’s Comet/CG source code.’

“Although both instructions inform the jury that the value of the Comet/CG source code is relevant to determining damages, the value of the code is supposed to be measured differently in each instance. Therefore, it is neither surprising nor impermissibly duplicative for MSI to have presented numerous theories to the jury for calculating its losses.”

Affirmed in part, and Reversed in part.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, McKinney, J., Flaum, J.