A software inventor had his claims for misappropriation of confidential ideas and breach of fiduciary duty revived Tuesday against an early investor who allegedly provided the inventor's trade secrets to the founders of Pinterest.

A unanimous ruling by the Appellate Division, First Department, said Justice Melvin Schweitzer, who sat in the Commercial Division, had erred in dismissing Theodore Schroeder's claims against Brian Cohen, chairman of New York Angels, who was an investor in Schroeder's early-stage companies.

The panel applied Delaware law in Schroeder v. Cohen, 652183/13, and rejected Cohen's claims that he had abandoned his role as a director, chairman and CEO of two website companies Schroeder had started by the time he allegedly communicated the websites' key secret technologies to the founders of what later became Pinterest.com.