The question is whether the preliminary injunction that was issued was appropriate. The ruling is that it wasn't. Nothing was said about what a full trial would or would not say.

A preliminary injunction is a ruling that, "You can't do this while the trial is going on." It is decided on a combination of how likely the other person is to win, and how much hardship the other person would undergo from your doing the action while the lawsuit is still being settled.

As you might imagine, a preliminary injunction has to meet a substantially more difficult level of proof than final judgement does. After all you are asking the judge to take decisive action before having the full case presented and all facts taken into account. Depending on the situation, even if the case is black and white, you might not get the injunction.

The actual ruling on p16 is, The order granting a preliminary injunction is reversed. Defendant Andrew Bunner shall recover his appellate costs. In other words, "A preliminary injunction was wrongfully issued. So we are giving you back what we can, which is your fees for fighting this case."

From my reading, the holdings upon which this was issued are as follows. First they conclude that because the plaintiff (DVD CCA) is not a public entity, and state law does not dictate a different standard, DVD CCA must have demonstrated both that it had a likelyhood of success on the merits and that the balance of harms weighed in favor of granting the injunction. (bottom of page 8 to the top of page 9). They then to demonstrate that it failed on both counts (judges like to overprove their decision, that way if a superior court overruled their reasoning on one line of argument, another might still stand). In particular at the top of p13 the court concludes that, DVD CCA has not shown a likelyhood that it will prevail on the merits of its claim of misappropriateion against Bunner. And on p15, The evidence in the present case is undisputed that by the time this lawsuit was filed hundreds of Web sites had posted the program...DVD CCA presented no evidence that the disclosure it sought to prohibit would cause more or different harm than that it claims it would have suffered by the general disclosure of the program.

All of this sounds very promising indeed, but it is not a final ruling on the merits of the case. In case there is any confusion on p16 the court finishes the Conclusions section with, It is important to stress that our conclusion is based on the appellate record filed in this court. It is not a final adjudication on the merits. The ultimate determination of trade secret status and misappropriation would be subject to proof to be presented at trial.

So DVD CCA didn't demonstrate that they had a good case, and didn't demonstrate harm. Therefore they shouldn't have been granted a preliminary injunction. But they still might have won the full case, and no precedent is set on that question.

Cheers,
Ben