High-protein chocolate milk and iced coffee brand Slate was denied a motion for preliminary injunction in its case against its former co-packer, Horseshoe Beverage Co., earlier this month.
Slate had requested the injunction to keep a similar, Horseshoe-produced brand called Nurri out of stores, claiming that it was causing irreparable harm to allow Nurri to continue to establish its brand.
In its original complaint, filed in February in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Slate alleged that Horseshoe stole Slate’s trade secrets to craft its own rival product for launch partner Costco.
With evidence from both sides proving inconclusive at this point in the case, U.S. District Court Judge William C. Griesbach noted that an improperly awarded injunction could both cost customers access to Nurri and harm the defendants, while not necessarily getting Slate to Costco’s shelves at scale.
Instead, Griesbach wrote, if Slate ultimately wins the case, “the majority of Slate’s asserted harms—loss of sales, customers, and contacts—are quantifiable and can be adequately remedied by money damages.”
What’s clear at this point is that the size of the prize in the ultimate ruling is a major brand opportunity. Nurri has grown from $20 million in sales in 2024 to an estimated $190 million for 2025, according to the judge’s brief.
Slate began outsourcing the production of its beverage to Horseshoe in 2023. Later that year, the brand alleges it approached its co-manufacturer with a confidential business opportunity to manufacture an ultrafiltered shake with 30 grams of protein developed at the request of Costco. Horseshoe instead stole the brand’s confidential business plan, appropriated its intellectual property and developed Nurri, a similar ultrafiltered milk product. Nurri launched exclusively in Costco last year, per the complaint.
What’s more, the complaint claims that during the production process of Slate’s new product, Horseshoe’s lab trials “did not come anywhere close to the beverages that Slate had previously made successfully.” Despite Slate revising its formula, the second run of samples still had significantly inconsistent viscosities. Once the brand switched to a different manufacturer, the issues ceased.
Slate’s motion for preliminary injunction requested that Horseshoe cease use of its confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets and halt the production and distribution of all Nurri products. However, Horseshoe Beverage Co. and its sister company, Trilliant Food and Nutrition, assert the information Slate calls confidential is “sufficiently obvious” and “ascertainable by anyone in the beverage formulation business.”
The court held a hearing on Slate’s motion on May 22, with Griesbach ruling eventually that both parties failed to introduce evidence beyond that already in the record.
“At this stage, the disputes of fact and conflicts over inferences to be drawn from the evidence are such that the court is unable to find that Slate is likely to succeed on those merits. Aside from this problem, Slate has failed to prove irreparable harm,” he wrote. “There is no reason to believe that Slate’s losses, if shown to be the result of a breach of contract or tortious conduct by Defendants, cannot be remedied by an award of damages.”