Notwithstanding that the contours of Colorado's cause of action for misappropriation of business value are not well-defined; to prove such a claim, a plaintiff must establish that the defendant appropriated a product of plaintiff's expenditure of labor, skill, and money. Smith v. TCI Commc'ns, Inc., 981 P.2d 690, 694 (Colo. Ct. App. 1999); Heller v. Lexton-Ancira Real Estate Fund, Ltd. 1972, 809 P.2d 1016 (Colo.App. 1990), rev'd on other grounds, 826 P.2d 819 (Colo. 1992); see also Int'l News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215, 39 S.Ct. 68, 63 L.Ed. 211 (1918) (unfair competition to misappropriate material that has been acquired as the result of organization and the expenditure of labor, skill, and money, and which is saleable by complainant for money); American Cyanamid Co. v. American Home Assurance Co., 30 Cal.App.4th 969, 35 Cal.Rptr.2d 920 (Cal.App. 1994) (misappropriation of another's competitive advantage when one business appropriates the organization or the expenditure of labor, skill, and money of another); United States Sporting Products, Inc. v. Johnny Stewart Game Calls, Inc., 865 S.W.2d 214 (Tex.App. 1993).

Smith v. TCI Communications provides some guidance, where the plaintiffs intended to develop a cable television channel to broadcast television and movies made by or starring African-Americans and educational and community programming focusing on the needs of the African-American community. They expended time, money, energy, and other resources in developing detailed business plans and strategies to implement them. After the plaintiffs presented their idea to a cable television provider, the provider announced that it would develop a television channel devoted to showing movies starring African-Americans. The plaintiffs brought a claim for misappropriation of business value, alleging that the provider misappropriated their idea for the new channel and their specific business plans to implement their idea. The Colorado Court of Appeals held that these allegations were sufficient to state a claim against the provider. Id. at 695. It was not just “a simple idea” that was misappropriated; “rather, that specific and unique plans for implementing this idea [including technical set-up, programming rights, sample weekday programming, sample weekend programming, and additional information regarding the projected size and make-up of the BMC market, the BMC's competition, advertising ideas, and projected pricing, budgets, revenues, and profits], which required the expenditure of considerable time and money to develop, were what defendants misappropriated and profited from.” Id. Thus, alleging that one developed a business plan (or transactional structure), and a strategy to implement that plan, can be a thing of value produced by one's labor, skill and money that can survive a motion to dismiss. 

The District of Colorado later addressed this tort in SGS Acquisition Co. v. Linsley, No. 16-cv-02486-MSK-KLM, 14-16 (D. Colo. Mar. 23, 2018), where plaintiff SGS alleged that it expended time, money, energy, and other resources to structure a deal to purchase a zinc mine. Additionally, upon inspection of the mine, the plaintiff recognized problems with the manner in which the mine's resources were being extracted, and then expended time, money, energy, and other resources to develop a mining concept that would correct those problems. Like the plaintiffs in Smith, SGS had developed a business plan and a strategy to implement it. The court found it sufficient to allege in the complaint that the defendants had stolen both the transactional structure that SGS had devised to purchase the mine and SGS's mining concept and ultimately benefited from that theft when they purchased the mine and later sold it to a third party.  

Also, in the context of trade secrets, this tort is not preempted by the Colorado Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“CUTSA”) because the misappropriation of “labor, skill, and money” does not necessarily rely on the existence of a legally cognizable trade secret. See Powell Prods., Inc. v. Marks, 948 F. Supp. 1469, 1474 (D. Colo. 1996) (stating that “a plaintiff may also bring claims that, although involving a trade secret misappropriation issue, include additional elements not necessary for a misappropriation claim under the [C]UTSA”). Rather, claims are preempted when they “are no more than a restatement of the same operative facts which would plainly and exclusively spell out only trade secret misappropriation.” Id. (internal citation omitted). 

This tort for misappropriation of business values has a two-year statute of limitations. See Col. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-80-102. “[A] cause of action for injury to person, property, reputation, possession, relationship, or status shall be considered to accrue on the date both the injury and its cause are known or should have been known by the exercise of reasonable diligence.” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 13-80-108(1).