Litigation Hold Notice — Apex Corp v. DataFlow Inc.

Matter: Apex Corp v. DataFlow Inc., Case No. 2026-CV-04817 Issued By: Office of General Counsel | Date: February 10, 2026 Classification: CONFIDENTIAL — ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGED

Preservation Obligations

You are receiving this notice because you may possess documents or information relevant to pending litigation between Apex Corp and DataFlow Inc. concerning alleged misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of the Master Services Agreement dated March 15, 2023.

Effective immediately, you must preserve all documents and electronically stored information (ESI) that may be relevant to this matter. This obligation supersedes any existing document retention or destruction policies. You must not delete, discard, alter, overwrite, or destroy any materials within the scope described below.

Failure to comply with this hold may result in court-imposed sanctions, adverse inference instructions, or monetary penalties against the company. Courts have imposed severe sanctions — including default judgment — for spoliation of evidence.

Scope of Materials

Preserve all materials dated from January 1, 2022 to present related to:

Custodian Responsibilities

As a custodian under this hold, you must:

1. Stop all routine deletion of documents within scope — do not empty trash, delete emails, or shred papers
2. Preserve all physical documents in a secure location; do not remove from the office
3. Do not alter any documents, metadata, or file properties — open in read-only mode if review is necessary
4. Identify any materials you may have on personal devices, home computers, or personal cloud storage and notify General Counsel immediately
5. Report any accidental deletion or loss of potentially relevant materials to General Counsel within 24 hours
6. Contact the Legal Hold Administrator (legalhold@apexcorp.com) with any questions about whether specific materials fall within scope

IT Department Actions

The IT Department shall implement the following within 48 hours of this notice:

• [ ] Suspend auto-deletion and archiving policies for all custodian mailboxes listed in Appendix A
• [ ] Preserve all backup tapes and snapshots from January 2022 forward for systems identified in Appendix B
• [ ] Disable automatic purge rules on Slack channels: #dataflow-project, #nimbus-engineering, #vendor-management
• [ ] Place litigation hold tags on all custodian OneDrive and SharePoint accounts
• [ ] Preserve access logs for source code repositories related to Project Nimbus
• [ ] Confirm completion of all actions to General Counsel in writing

Compliance Confirmation

You must acknowledge receipt of this notice within 72 hours by completing and returning the confirmation below to legalhold@apexcorp.com.

I acknowledge that I have received and read this Litigation Hold Notice. I understand my obligations to preserve all materials within scope. I confirm that I will comply with all preservation requirements and will not destroy, alter, or discard any potentially relevant documents or ESI.

Name: ____ Department: ____

Signature: ____ Date: ____