As an update to our April 28, 2016 article on the passage of the DTSA, Wednesday the 11th of May, President Barak Obama signed into law S.1890 , a bill that provides a new tool in preventing theft of trade secrets from companies. This legislation will amend the Espionage Act of 1996 to create a federal civil remedy for stealing trade secrets. This will give innovators another path in which to protect their intellectual property and provide them uniformity when protecting their trade secrets.
“One of the biggest advantages that we’ve got in this global economy is that we innovate,” Obama said at a signing ceremony. “We come up with new services, new goods, new products, new technologies. Unfortunately, all too often, some of our competitors, instead of competing with us fairly, are trying to steal these trade secrets from American companies, and that means a loss of American jobs, a loss of American markets, a loss of American leadership.”
According to the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property trade secrets theft costs the economy more than $300 billion a year.
Utah Senator Orrin Hatch (R), the bill’s sponsor said in a statement “Enacting the Defend Trade Secrets Act is the most significant intellectual property development in years, and it demonstrates that Republicans and Democrats can work across the aisle in seeking to advance important public policies that will benefit the American people and boost our nation’s economy,”
