Key Takeaways From The New Trade Secrets Act

Earlier this year the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 was signed into law, amending the Economic Espionage Act and creating a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. The DTSA will have a significant impact on U.S. trade secret litigation, which had been governed primarily by common law or state statutory law that varied significantly from state to state. The resulting lack of predictability, and the fact that even federal courts hearing trade secrets cases were required to apply state law in their local jurisdictions, led to the push for federal trade secret protection, explains Weil, Gotshal & Manges attorneys Christopher J. Cox and An Tran in Today’s General Counsel. They caution, however, that practitioners need to keep in mind that although trade secret owners now have unprecedented access to the federal courts, the DTSA “specifically states that it does not preempt any other provision of law and thus will not replace existing state trade secret law. Thus, trade secret owners faced with actual or threatened trade secret misappropriation may still find themselves in state courts, litigating under state trade secret law.”