DECISION AND ORDERINTRODUCTION Plaintiff irth Solutions, LLC brings this action against Defendants Apex Data Solutions and Services, LLC d/b/a “DigTix,” and its owner, Kyle Murphy, asserting six claims for 1) misappropriation of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”), 2) common law misappropriation of trade secrets, 3) tortious interference with contractual relations, 4) unfair competition, 5) unjust enrichment, and 6) conversion. ECF No. 1. Simultaneously with its Complaint, Plaintiff filed a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction (“TRO Motion”). ECF Nos. 5, 6.In response, Defendants filed a Motion to Dismiss or Transfer Venue (ECF No. 26) and an Omnibus Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Plaintiff’s TRO Motion and Motion to Dismiss or Transfer Venue. ECF No. 32.The Court held a hearing on January 8, 2019, at which it reserved ruling on both motions. This Decision and Orders resolves those motions.BACKGROUNDPlaintiff irth and Defendant Apex are competitors who both offer web-based software programs that help utility companies manage “dig tickets.” Dig tickets notify utility companies and other underground asset owners of excavation jobs that will impact their property. When a utility receives a dig ticket, it must physically mark the location of its assets at the excavation site to protect the assets and avoid interruption of services. To manage the dig tickets, utilities engage “contract locators” to identify and mark locations in response to a ticket. The contract locators, in turn, rely on software such as that offered by the parties in this case to successfully manage and process the dig tickets.Plaintiff’s dig ticket management program, “DigTrack,” was developed in 1990 by Robert Dreste, the founder of a company called Bytronics, Inc., in Rochester, New York. In October 2017, irth, an Ohio corporation, acquired Bytronics, but Robert Dreste and other former Bytronics employees continue to operate DigTrack from the Rochester, New York area.Defendants’ dig ticket management program, “DigTix,” was developed in 2012. Although Apex is incorporated in Ohio, it is wholly owned by Kyle Murphy, a California resident.The dispute in this case arose when, between February and September 2018, Plaintiff lost three customers. Plaintiff investigated and reviewed the three customers’ activity on DigTrack and discovered that Kyle Murphy, using his own name, had been logging into DigTrack using credentials supplied by each of the three customers. Plaintiff hired a forensic expert to conduct a more detailed investigation and found that Murphy had logged in to DigTrack multiple times between January and September 2018, copied 550 files from DigTrack using a program called “Wget,” and attempted to obtain more data from DigTrack using a Structured Query Language (“SQL”) injection, which is a mechanism that can be used to gain access to a database.Plaintiff also noticed that, shortly after Murphy’s logins during January 2018, on February 18, 2018, Murphy published a blog post on DigTix’s website announcing newly available features — features which were already offered by DigTrack. Similarly, after Murphy’s logins between February and November 2018, on November 14, 2018, Murphy published another blog post announcing more new features which DigTrack already offered. Plaintiff then filed its Complaint and TRO Motion in this Court on December 6, 2018.In response, Murphy admits that he logged in to the three customers’ DigTrack accounts but explains that he only did so to determine what customer-owned data was available to migrate to DigTix and to “retrieve that data in a consistent, structured format.” ECF No. 27, 25. He points to the fact that he logged in using his own name as evidence that he had no intent to steal any of DigTrack’s trade secrets. He also submits evidence demonstrating that the features Plaintiff claims DigTix copied from DigTrack were already under development at DigTix in 2017, ECF Nos. 27, 28-29; 27-1; 27-3, and that the features were not secret, but were offered and publicly advertised by DigTrack and other industry competitors. ECF Nos. 27,
