In February 2013, the Obama Administration issued Administration Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets. Part of that plan included the Administration’s solicitation of public comment. I, like a handful of others (13 of us in total), submitted comments. My summary comments are available here (the PDF at the bottom (and here) has my full submission); links to all 13 submissions are available here.
On Thursday (June 20, 2013), the Obama Administration issued its 2013 Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement. As explained by U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, the Strategic Plan “builds on our efforts to protect intellectual property to date, and provides a roadmap for our work over the next three years.”
Ms. Espinel described in her blog how the new Strategic Plan fits in with prior plans as follows:
Since the first Joint Strategic Plan was released in 2010, the Administration has made tremendous progress in intellectual property enforcement. Coordination and efficiency of the Federal agencies has improved; U.S law enforcement has increased significantly and we have successfully worked with Congress to improve our legislation. We have increased our focus on trade secret theft and economic espionage that give foreign governments and companies an unfair competitive advantage by stealing our technology. We have pressed our trading partners to do more to improve enforcement of all types of intellectual property. We have encouraged the private sector to do more on a voluntary basis to make online infringement less profitable as a business, consistent with due process, free speech, privacy interests of users, competition law and protecting legitimate uses of the Internet.
Of particular relevance to trade secrets lawyers, Ms. Espinel focused on legislation as follows: “We will review our domestic legislation to make sure it is effective and up-to-date.”
As many readers of this blog know, there has already been some activity on that front with respect to the Economic Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. See here.
Stay tuned for more.