U.S. Senate Passes Federal Trade Secrets Act

On April 4, 2016 the United States Senate unanimously passed the Defend Trade Secrets Act (S. 1890).  The bill intends to establish for the first time a uniform national trade secret protection standard.

In general, a trade secret is information that is valuable to its owner, not generally known, and that has been kept secret by the owner.  Typical examples of trade secrets include customer lists, formulas, algorithms, software code, procedures, industrial and manufacturing processes, drawings, recipes, business forecasts, and strategic plans, to name a few.

Presently, federal law provides limited trade secret protection.  The Economic Espionage Act covers criminal theft by foreign nationals for which charges must be brought by the U.S. government.  Also, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act affords businesses some trade secret remedies, depending on the specifics of their cases.  However, by and large, laws governing trade secrets currently fall within the purview of