Diane M. Doolittle

Doolittle is co-chair of Quinn Emanuel’s national trial practice group and she has a 92 percent win record over more than 70 cases, according to the firm’s estimates. Over the past several years she has notched a successful outcome in each of the four trade secrets cases she has tried to verdict. She also teaches trial advocacy and deposition practice at Stanford Law School.

In August 2019 a Delaware federal jury deliberated less than three hours following a week-long trial before finding for her client, a small hair care product maker suing beauty care giant L’Oreal USA Inc. on allegations of trade secret theft and patent infringement.

As a result, L’Oreal faces a nearly $100 million judgment. Liqwd Inc. and Olaplex LLC v. L’Oreal USA Inc., 1:17-cv-00014 (D. Del., filed Jan. 5, 2017).

“We don’t always represent the little guy,” she said. “It was very satisfying to go to bat for this 30-employee company against 100,000-employee L’Oreal.”

At issue was Olaplex’ new hair product that prevented hair breakage during the bleaching process. “Our theme was that this was a case of corporate greed,” Doolittle said. “L’Oreal is the world’s largest beauty company. They had the resources to pay my client for this technology, but they chose to cut corners.”

Doolittle said that in discovery she found a cost-benefit analysis in which L’Oreal calculated that acquiring Olaplex’ technology would cost $1 billion but claiming to have developed it would cost $250 million.

“I argued that they had 750 million reasons to steal our technology,” she said. “In trade secrets cases there’s blood, sweat and tears that go into developing game-changing products. So the idea that someone else takes it and uses it without paying is offensive.”

She showed jurors that L’Oreal approached Olaplex about an acquisition and acquired confidential and valuable information about its product as part of the pre-acquisition process before declining to make an offer. L’Oreal than created a copycat product that—after Olaplex’ patents issued—also infringed the patents.

“They didn’t even have a story that grabbed people,” Doolittle said of the defendant. “Plainly, the jury rejected their theory of independent invention. Our circumstantial evidence was very compelling. They were left with a coincidence argument, and it fell flat.”

The jury’s finding that L’Oreal’s patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation was willful enhanced the jury’s award to nearly the $100 million mark. The panel also issued an injunction. L’Oreal has vowed to appeal, though post-trial motions remain in progress, Doolittle said.

“The stuff is great,” Doolittle said of Olaplex. “It’s like magic. I have started using it and my hair’s like silk. As far as I know, none of the women on the jury used it—but I bet they do now.”

— John Roemer