The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (DTSA) (, codified at , et seq.) is a United States federal law that allows an owner of a trade secret to sue in federal court when its

trade secrets A trade secret is a form of intellectual property (IP) comprising confidential information that is not generally known or readily ascertainable, derives economic value from its secrecy, and is protected by reasonable efforts to maintain its conf ...

have been misappropriated. The act was signed into law by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

on May 11, 2016. It underscored Congress's desire to align closely with the

Uniform Trade Secrets Act The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), published by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) in 1979 and amended in 1985, is a model law designed for adoption by U.S. state, U.S. states. It was developed to resolve inconsistencies in the treatment of Trade ...

, which had been adopted in some form in almost every U.S. state. Technically, the DTSA extended the

Economic Espionage Act of 1996 The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 () was a 6 title Act of Congress dealing with a wide range of issues, including not only industrial espionage (''e.g.'', the theft or misappropriation of a trade secret and the National Information Infrastructu ...

, which criminalizes certain trade secret misappropriations. The law also grants

legal immunity Legal immunity, or immunity from prosecution, is a legal status wherein an individual or entity cannot be held liable for a violation of the law, in order to facilitate societal aims that outweigh the value of imposing liability in such cases. S ...

to corporate

whistleblower Whistleblowing (also whistle-blowing or whistle blowing) is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical or ...

s. After the DTSA's passage by the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

, ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' magazine called the law the "Biggest Development in /nowiki>Intellectual Property">Intellectual_Property.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Intellectual Property">/nowiki>Intellectual Property/nowiki> in Years".

Notable cases

The first judicial decision under the DTSA was ''Henry Schein, Inc. v. Cook'', in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, on June 10, 2016. In that decision, U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar granted the first temporary restraining order under the DTSA prohibiting an ex-employee from soliciting customers of the plaintiff. The first verdict under the act came in ''Dalmatia Import Group, Inc. v. FoodMatch Inc. et al.'', on February 25, 2017. In that case, a federal jury awarded Dalmatia $2.5 million for misappropriation of trade secrets, trademark infringement and counterfeiting, $500,000 of which was allocated to the DTSA claim. The trade secrets claim was based on Foodmatch's misappropriation of Dalmatia's fig jam recipe.

References

External links

* {{USBill, 114, S., 1890 at congress.gov Acts of the 114th United States Congress Trade secrets United States federal commerce legislation United States federal trade legislation United States federal intellectual property legislation