IP Law Daily, TRADE SECRETS—7th Cir.: Fool me twice: No damages for inventor who alleges misconduct by sales agent and attorney, (Sep 2, 2026)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

The inventor failed to show that she was deprived of a valid trade secrets claim, among others.

An inventor who claims that a competitor stole her trade secrets and that her own lawyer later failed to protect her interests will walk away with no recovery, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has held, concluding that the inventor failed to plead that any alleged misconduct by her attorney caused her damages. The court’s opinion, which finds that the inventor failed to plead a claim of legal malpractice against the lawyer, comes a year after the inventor’s trade secrets claim against the competitor was dismissed in another forum (Sima v. Friedlander, No. 25-1729 (7th Cir. Aug. 28, 2026)).

The lawsuit was brought by Amanda Sima, an entrepreneur and inventor. Sima’s complaint relates to the following facts. In 2013, Sima designed a spill-proof cup lid for children, which she branded “JoJo Cups.” In early 2019, she shared her confidential materials with FM Turner, a sales-rep agency for manufacturers of foodservice products, to help market the product. Later that year, Waddington North America, a foodservice product manufacturer now owned by Novolex, issued a product that she believed to be “identical to JoJo Cups in terms of utility, and nearly identical in design.” She eventually came to believe that Turner had double-crossed her by sharing her confidential materials with Waddington, which was another Turner client at the time.

Feeling burned, the inventor hired a law firm to investigate options. But that firm, too, the inventor claims, played a part in her troubles. The lead lawyer on her matter at one point allegedly told her that she had valuable claims that could be worth seven figures. But the law firm later changed its view of the case, the inventor claims, and eventually terminated its representation of her. In fact, the inventor contends, her lawyer’s change of heart came right at the time that he was negotiating a move to the law firm representing Novolex—a large packaging manufacturer that had purchased Waddington and was therefore now the inventor’s direct adversary. Worse, the inventor claims, the law firm’s last-minute break with her left her no time to find another lawyer and pursue a lawsuit against Novolex before the statute of limitations ran out.

Now twice burned, the inventor filed a pro se lawsuit against her former lawyer and law firm. (She later sued Novolex and others separately in Colorado, but her design-related claims were dismissed as time-barred.) The district court dismissed the case for failure to state a claim, finding that the inventor had failed to allege any harm caused by the defendants’ conduct. The inventor appealed, leading to this decision.

Statute of limitations. The court of appeals affirmed. The court made clear that it was “troubled” by the lawyer’s conduct. The problem for the inventor, the court emphasized, was the statute of limitations. In order to state a malpractice claim, the court stated, the inventor “needed to plausibly plead the existence of a colorable underlying claim.” And because the harm must be causally connected to the conduct complained of, the court noted, she needed to plausibly plead that the law firm’s conduct “caused her to run out of time” to pursue that claim. “This she has failed to do,” the court found.

In fact, the court found, the statute of limitations burned the inventor in two different ways. The inventor’s complaint alleged that she lost the opportunity to pursue claims against Turner and Novolex for unfair business practices, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract. But the statute of limitations for unfair business practices had already run by the time the inventor first started speaking to her attorneys about possible claims, so there was nothing they could have done for her. As to unjust enrichment and breach of contract, the court noted, the pendulum swung both ways. Claims against Novolex, to which Colorado law applied, were time-barred. Claims against Turner, to which Ohio law applied, would still have remained viable because the statute of limitations period in that jurisdiction was longer. But that did not help the inventor either, the court reasoned, because she still had nearly two years or more to hire another lawyer and bring the claims.

Finally, the court also rejected the inventor’s claim that her lawyers deprived her of a valid misappropriation of trade secrets claim against Novolex. For one thing, the court noted, her complaint “disavowed this theory” when she described her discussions with her attorneys. Indeed, the court noted, the narrative told in the complaint was that the attorneys determined that “something other than a trade secrets claim was viable” and that the inventor then pushed them to look at different claims. In any event, the court noted, a trade secrets claim was already time-barred by that point anyway.

The Case is No. 25-1729.

Judge: Maldonado, N.

Attorneys: Paul Gordon (Gordon Legal Malpractice, PLLC) for Amanda Sima. Alexandra Schaller (Loeb & Loeb LLP) for Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP.

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