1. The application of another’s property or money dishonestly to one’s own use. See EMBEZZLEMENT. Cf. APPROPRIATION; EXPROPRIATION.
2. Intellectual property. The common-law tort of using the noncopyrightable information or ideas that an organization collects and disseminates for a profit to compete unfairly against that organization, or copying a work whose creator has not yet claimed or been granted exclusive rights in the work. Int’l News Serv. v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215, 39 S.Ct. 68 (1918). • The elements of misappropriation are: (1) the plaintiff must have invested time, money, or effort to extract the information; (2) the defendant must have taken the information with no similar investment; and (3) the plaintiff must have suffered a competitive injury because of the taking. [Cases: Copyrights and Intellectual Property 108. C.J.S. Copyrights and Intellectual Property § 107.]
3. The doctrine giving rise to such a tort claim. — misappropriate, vb.
“The doctrine of ‘misappropriation,’ which is a distinct branch of unfair competition, … has been applied to a variety of situations in which the courts have sensed that one party was dealing ‘unfairly’ with another, but which were not covered by the three established statutory systems protecting intellectual property: copyright, patent, and trademark/deception as to origin.” U.S. Golf Ass’n v. St. Andrews Systems, Data-Max, Inc., 749 F.2d 1028, 1034–35 (3d Cir. 1984)(Becker, J.).
