Posts in Trade Secrets

Trade secrets are the only major type of intellectual property (IP) that is not backed by U.S. federal civil remedies to compensate owners for theft. Notably, American businesses face hundreds of billions of dollars in losses per year due to trade secret misappropriation, and the problem is worsening, as cybertheft (particularly from China) continues to grow in scale… Appropriately crafted civil trade secret legislation is no panacea, but it holds the promise of providing tangible benefits, not just to private trade secret holders, but to the overall economy. In addition to vindicating property rights and protecting individual businesses, such legislation should enhance the effectiveness of the competitive process and thereby raise economic welfare.

A trade secret is defined as any valuable business information that is not generally known and is subject to reasonable efforts to preserve confidentiality. Generally speaking, a trade secret will be protected from exploitation by those who either obtain access through improper means, those who obtain the information from one who they know or should have known gained access through improper means, or those who breach a promise to keep the information confidential. While virtually every business has at least some trade secrets, they are quite fragile because they protect information and resources that are secret, which necessarily means that protection is lost if and when the secret becomes publicly known. For that reason, when other forms of intellectual property protection are available, such as copyright or patent protection, one should carefully consider the wisdom of relying only on trade secret protection.

In today’s political climate, any bipartisan legislative action is, well, unusual. Unanimous votes are like unicorns. But one happened yesterday, as the Senate voted 87-0 to approve the Defend Trade Secrets Act, S.1890. The DTSA does not preempt state laws, but provides trade secret owners with another, optional forum when the subject matter of the trade secret relates to interstate commerce. This means that local disputes will for the most part continue to be litigated in state courts, but for cases that can use the special advantages provided by nationwide service of process and a single set of rules across multiple jurisdictions, plaintiffs are likely to use the federal option.

Earlier today the White House released a Statement of Administration Policy, which strongly supports passage of s. 1890, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA). The policy statement explained: ”The Administration strongly supports Senate passage of S. 1890, the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016… S. 1890 would establish a Federal civil private cause of action for trade secret theft that would provide businesses with a more uniform, reliable, and predictable way to protect their valuable trade secrets anywhere in the country.”

The report noted key areas of strength for the American IP environment, including effective trade secret protection, commitment to international treaties, mechanisms for pharmaceutical-related patent and generally appropriate boundaries set by courts on copyright exceptions. Along with narrowing patentability and weak enforcement against counterfeit products, key weaknesses for the U.S. included ambiguity regarding the obligations of Internet service providers (ISPs) to respond to trademark-holder notices of infringement and the need to speed up information sharing between rights holders and border agents to aid in the identification of infringing goods.

This year our panel has a diverse variety of wishes. We see the usual wishes relating to patent eligibility and the abstract idea exception, with a reference to a Moody Blue’s song to make the point. We also see wishes relating to inter partes review (IPR) and the biotech industry, and a wish for uniformity at the Federal Circuit. There is a wish for federal trade secret legislation to finally pass, and a reminder that elections matter, even for us in the intellectual property space, a topic that we will return to quite a lot during 2016 here at IPWatchdog.com. We also see several exasperated wishes, hoping for solutions to the real problems facing the industry rather than the same old tired cries for “reform” that would benefit only a handful of large entities while harming practically everyone else.

If Gene (the “genie”) were to grant me patent and IP wishes for 2016, I would ask for (in no particular order) the passage of trade secrets legislation, resolution of the current patent reform legislation stalemate in Congress, that the USPTO consider evidence of non-preemption during its initial determination of patent eligibility; and that the USPTO prioritize accuracy, completeness and accessibility of the public record as part of its Patent Quality Review.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) will improve trade secret protection, which will incentivize innovation and benefit companies–large and small–in all industry sectors. I have seen the letter in support of this legislation signed by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, tech associations, and an array of well-known companies in a variety of industries. But I can also tell you from my experience representing small businesses that they rely on trade secret law far more than patenting to protect their intellectual property, and this legislation will improve their ability to compete.

While trade secrets have become more important, advances in electronics like flash drives and smartphones have made data theft almost infinitely easier and faster. And unlike the threats of a generation ago, when trade secret theft typically benefited a local competitor, globalization of business means that today’s insiders often steal on behalf of companies located in other states or countries.

In a 2014 Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum, I highlighted the growing problem of trade secret misappropriation faced by American business, and explained that an appropriately crafted federal law would help American victims recover damages for theft of their trade secrets, make it easier to stop thieves before they leave the country, and thereby strengthen the American economy, without undermining federalism.…

Earlier today the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which is authored by U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT). This is an important issue for Congress because trade secret theft puts American jobs at risk and threatens incentives for continued investment in research and development in the United States. Currently, civil trade secret laws can and do vary state-to-state, and while the differences may not be substantively large it is truly odd that in a global economy the United States has left trade secret law to the States to individually regulate. It is long since time for Congress to act.

Employers often assume that they have the same weapons in their arsenal to prevent theft of virtual trade secrets as they have against other types of loss. As the prosecution of Sergey Aleynikov in Federal and New York courts showed, however, that simply isn’t true. Even though juries in both courts found him guilty of downloading confidential computer code from his employer, judges ultimately found that the laws under which he was prosecuted did not cover the acts he committed. A careful employer should therefore make sure it puts precautions in place that prevent theft of computer code, rather than relying on the threat of criminal prosecution.

Aleynikov was a computer programmer employed by Goldman Sachs to write high-frequency trading code. In 2009, he accepted a job offer to join a potential competitor, where he would create a new high-frequency trading platform from the ground up. Before he left Goldman, however, he sent portions of Goldman’s high frequency trading code to a German server for his own future use. After Goldman found out, it went to the FBI; Aleynikov was then arrested on a flight home from a visit to Chicago. With that arrest began his circuitous journey through the U.S. legal system, governed by two different sovereigns and under two different legal regimes.

Fears about trade secret trolls are based in mythology, not on fact. If those claiming federal trade secret legislation would lead to trade secret trolls actually understand trade secret law they simply couldn’t possibly come to a conclusion that there is any risk there will be a single trade secret troll, let alone some kind of zombie-like rise. Simply stated the fear is pure fiction. In addition to seeing absolutely no evidence of trade secret trolls on the State level, trade secrets require a relationship or some nexus between the parties to the dispute. You simply cannot commoditize trade secret litigation in the same way patent trolls can and do commoditize patent litigation.

A very troublesome flaw in Talent Wants to be Free is that the author frequently conflates non-compete agreements with two other very common forms of employee restraints: confidentiality (or nondisclosure) agreements and invention assignments. As most practitioners can readily appreciate, there is a world of difference between the first one and the other two, and they typically are not joined in a single document. Non-competes stop someone from taking a job with a competitor, and their use is restricted in many places and illegal in a few, like California.

The titans of the 19th Century made fortunes because they controlled access to the raw materials and infrastructure of commerce: steel, oil, lumber, railroads, canals, shipping. In contrast, the Third Industrial Revolution creates value not just from ideas that improve our ability to transform materials, but from information itself. This shift to intangible assets has been profound, but so swift that few have paid sufficient attention to the magnitude of the change. In the Information Age, your secrets – a new technology, a business plan, insights extracted from data analytics – define your competitive advantage. And because business is global, competition can emerge anywhere, anytime.