Political Quotes

“I am pleased that the Senate today will pass this simple, commonsense legislation to clarify a provision of the Economic Espionage Act and thereby help protect American businesses and American jobs. The Economic Espionage Act makes it a crime to, among other things, steal a trade secret knowing that the theft will hurt the owner. This is an important protection for American businesses, which often choose trade secret protection over other forms of intellectual property protection. A recent decision of the Second Circuit in United States v. Aleynikov casts doubt on the reach of the statute. A jury in that case found the defendant guilty of stealing computer code from his employer. The court overturned the conviction, holding among other things that the trade secret did not meet the interstate commerce prong of the statute, even though the defendant had copied the stolen code from his office in New York to a server in Germany; downloaded the code to his home computer in New Jersey; then flew to his new job in Illinois with the stolen source code in his possession; and the code was used in interstate commerce. The court held that the Economic Espionage Act provision applies only to trade secrets that are part of a product that is produced to be placed in interstate commerce.…”