Trade Secrets Essay

930 Words2 Pages

Trade Secrets Economic espionage is the theft of trade secrets. Trade secrets are used by companies when manufacturing products. Trade secrets may be a technique, device, pattern, program, formula, process, or a combination of these things. Companies will go the extra mile to make sure this information is protected and doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. However, economic espionage wouldn’t exist if the measures taken by companies truly protected their trade secrets. Two issues involved in investigating economic espionage and trade secrets are the difficulty of collecting evidence and proving the trade secrets were truly stolen. It is hard to collect evidence in a trade secret case. Unfortunately, this affects the success of the investigation …show more content…

Economic espionage is the theft of trade secrets, but it is usually associated with a foreign entity. The trade secrets that are stolen will benefit a foreign government or some other foreign entity. Economic espionage doesn’t have to include the intent to harm the owner of the trade secrets. Additionally, economic espionage is punished more severely. The misappropriation of trade secrets occurs when trade secrets are stolen in order to benefit someone other than the original owner. “Both crimes are covered by the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, Title 18, Sections 1831 and 1832 of the U.S. Code (Coleman, 2014)”. Additionally, both crimes are linked to the insider threat and the growing threat of cyber-enabled trade secret theft (Coleman, 2014). I think economic espionage can cause a significant amount of damage to the U.S. aside from the impact it would have on the company. Depending on what the company manufactures, it can give a foreign entity an advantage over the U.S. Potential remedies to the situation include conducting risk assessment, establishing an effective security policy, using an efficient data access policy, securing the infrastructure, and monitoring employee …show more content…

The major complication introduced if economic espionage or misappropriation of a trade secret involves a foreign entity is prosecuting the person responsible for the theft. These cases often go unreported due to the low success rate of the court cases. It is extremely difficult to find enough evidence to convict the culprit. “Often, the greatest challenge in prosecuting economic espionage, as opposed to trade secret theft, is being able to prove that the theft was intended to benefit a foreign government or foreign instrumentality (Coleman, 2014)”. “The beneficiary of the stolen trade secrets may be traced to an overseas entity, but obtaining evidence that proves the entity’s relationship with a foreign government can be difficult (Coleman, 2014)”. Even though the investigation and litigation of these crimes can time consuming, companies can recoup potential losses and further protect their intellectual capital by taking action (Barbanel,

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