Michigan Court Orders Corporation to Reveal Facts Regarding Potential Misappropriation

Entities do not have the right to claim a privilege against self-incrimination. Accordingly, even though agents of a corporation may refuse, based on the Fifth Amendment, to comply with a court order requiring the individuals to submit an affidavit stating whether their principal has ever possessed specified products that allegedly embody purloined trade secrets, the corporation itself must abide by the order even though the effect may be incriminate the agents.  

PCS4LESS, LLC and an affiliated company sued a corporation and certain of its employees in a Michigan state court, alleging that the plaintiffs were the exclusive licensees with respect to certain software, which constituted trade secrets, used in the secondary market for refurbished cell phones. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants had misappropriated the software. The court was asked to enter a TRO directing the defendants neither to use nor to destroy the trade secrets, and to deliver the products containing the software to the plaintiffs. 

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