The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has overturned a $59 million damages award for trade secret misappropriation under the Defend Trade Secrets Act on statute of limitations grounds.
The decision arose from the case Insulet Corp. v. EOFlow, Co. Ltd., No. 25-1807, issued on May 28, 2026, and carries significant strategic implications for companies suspecting potential trade secret theft.
The Federal Circuit held that the statute of limitations had expired before Insulet filed its lawsuit, because the company knew or should have known critical facts more than three years earlier.
Insulet Corporation is a Massachusetts-based medical-device manufacturer that produces an adhesive, wearable insulin patch pump known as the Omnipod.
Around 2018, South Korean early-stage company EOFlow began developing a similar-looking wearable insulin patch pump called the EOPatch 2.
That same year, former Insulet employees, including former Director of Mechanical Engineering Steve DiIanni, began working for EOFlow.
A jury had originally awarded Insulet $452 million in damages for EOFlow’s misappropriation of four trade secrets, before the district court reduced that figure to $59.4 million to avoid double-recovery.
The district court had also issued a global permanent injunction and dismissed patent claims without prejudice following post-trial proceedings in the case.
On the statute of limitations question, the Federal Circuit applied what it termed an “access-plus-similarity” framework to determine when Insulet possessed sufficient facts to pursue a DTSA claim.
The court held that by 2019, Insulet knew or should have known that a former employee had given EOFlow access to its trade secrets and that similarity existed between those secrets and EOFlow’s competing product.
The Federal Circuit also ruled, as a matter of first impression, that a single accrual date applies to all four asserted trade secrets as part of a single course of continued misappropriation.
This means that discovery of misappropriation of one trade secret starts the limitations clock running for related trade secrets misappropriated in the same course of conduct.
One judge on the three-member panel dissented, warning that the court’s holding could cause a misappropriation claim to accrue simply when an employee moves to a competitor making a comparable product.
The majority dismissed that concern, reasoning that the opinion adequately explained the distinction between a party’s possession of sufficient facts to state a claim versus mere suspicion of the same.
The ruling makes clear that the limitations period begins once a plaintiff knows or should know facts sufficient to state a misappropriation claim, not when it has gathered enough evidence to prove it.
The decision also underscores the need for companies to conduct timely audits of files and electronic data and to monitor departing employees when potential threats to trade secrets emerge.
Insulet may seek rehearing before the en banc Federal Circuit or pursue an appeal to the US Supreme Court following the ruling.