The Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) is now law of the land, and the United States now (officially) has a national trade secrets law with a concomitant private civil right of action.
Specifically, the DTSA amends the Economic Espionage Act to create a private right of action based on the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). The UTSA has been adopted in 47 states (48, if you count North Carolina’s version) – all but Massachusetts and New York. That said, the formulations of the act as adopted vary significantly among the states that have adopted it. See Sid Leach’s Anything but Uniform: A State-By-State Comparison of the Key Differences of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
Nevertheless, given that the new federal trade secrets law (technically, the new private right of action, as the EEA has been around since 1996) is based on the UTSA, a comparison of the key provisions is worth a look.
Accordingly, below is a side-by-side comparison of the key provisions (from slides I prepared for a few seminars/webinars I gave on the DTSA). All language changes are indicated through the key; if there is no key, there are no language changes. (Click the slides to see larger.)
