That said, the secrecy angle (though not a privacy angle, and not necessarily a “confidences” one a la Epstein) seems to be the right take. Nixon Peabody, like H&R, had a secret that it wanted to share with the world on its own terms (H&R) or not at all (NP). The H&R case is at least odd and perhaps wrong either because the alleged secret wasn’t really secret (read Bill Patry’s fair use book on this), or because some things are simply so important that they ought never to be secret at all (metaphorically and in a small way, H&R may have been repeating Nixon’s error: the attempted cover-up was worse than the “crime”). NP’s position is arguably stronger than H&R’s. Economic value or no economic value, there’s no normative reason that NP shouldn’t be able to assert that the song and video *are* (or were) secrets. Affairs of state don’t hang in the balance. The fact that DL is only a post-hoc enabler, and that NP might locate and pursue the leaker(s), doesn’t weaken *NP’s* interest. The problem facing both NP and H&R, as Matt concludes, is that both copyright and trade secret law are poor fits for this argument.

I should be clear, the law firm would have a good trade secret law claim if it derived some non-reputation-based economic value from this song not being generally known. My comments relate purely to the copyright claim.