Political Quotes

“I thank Senator Hatch for the opportunity to go into more detail about this terrific bipartisan, bicameral Defend Trade Secrets Act. It is actually relatively simple. It creates a Federal private right of action for misappropriation of trade secrets. It uses an existing Federal criminal law, the Economic Espionage Act, to define trade secrets. It draws heavily from the Uniform Trade Secrets Act which has been enacted by many States to define what is misappropriation. Simply put, our bill harmonizes U.S. law. Each State has a different trade secret law, and they vary in a range of different ways. Not all of these differences are major, but they affect in small but real ways the definition of a trade secret, what an owner must do to keep a trade secret a secret, what constitutes misappropriation, and what damages are available. So our Defend Trade Secrets Act creates a single, national baseline or a minimum level of protection and gives trade secret owners access to both a uniform national law and our excellent Federal courts, which provide nationwide service of process and execution of judgments. It is important to note that this bill does not preempt State law because States are free to add further protections on top of what is in this bill. The proposed legislation does one more thing, and trade secret owners tell us this is a critical component of the law not available in States. It creates an ex parte seizure ability.…”