Microsoft pushes Trade Secrets Bill - 1 views
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A spokesman for the Microsoft On The Issues website has expressed the company’s support for new legislation that would reform the legal framework for companies wishing to protect their trade secrets in a cloud-centric world where such information is frequently forced to reside on networks. In the post Microsoft’s Assistant General Counsel of IP Policy & Strategy Jule Sigall rallies behind business and academic concerns supporting the proposed Defend Trade Secrets Act 2015 (DTSA), which goes before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee today. Sigall, who is also Associate General Counsel for Copyright in Microsoft’s Legal & Corporate Affairs department, makes an ardent case for reform of the current legislation, as furnished by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). UTSA’s provisions are argued to be fractured, and rendered ineffective both by the inability of plaintiffs to pursue suits in federal courts (despite trade secret infractions being Federal by nature), and by the fact that not all states have adopted or instituted all the measures provided by the legislation. Additionally the limited provision for redress in international cases of trade secret theft are to be addressed.
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Sigall presents the case of Microsoft’s Cortana AI as an example of why new legislation is necessary: ‘[Behind] Cortana sits a vast amount of technology developed or enhanced in-house by Microsoft – voice recognition; language translation; reactive and predictive algorithms that can synthesize context, location and data, and interface with the vast resources of the Bing search engine index; and a complex array of cloud servers to crunch and serve data in real time. This technology represents tens of thousands of hours of research, trial and error, and continued improvement as Cortana is adapted for new devices and new scenarios’
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Sigall argues that better protection procedures for trade secrets, the only form of IP which currently lacks comprehensive cover in law, is essential for start-ups whose ideas, business plans and even customer lists may constitute the only marketable value of a company that is just in the stage of consolidating. ‘A trade secret is unique among forms of intellectual property in how it is legally protected. While it is a federal crime to steal a trade secret, a business that has its trade secrets stolen must rely on state law to pursue a civil remedy. Owners of copyrights, patents, and trademarks can go to federal court to protect their property and seek damages when their property has been infringed, but trade secret owners do not have access to such a federal remedy.’
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Lots of possible Constitutional issues lurking. The Constitution creates only two types of intellectual property, patents and copyrights. "(P)roperty interests . . . are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law." Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 US 986 (1984), https://goo.gl/ZljO1H (trade secrets case). The traditional source of rights in trade secrets have been state law. Thus there is a state's rights issue lurking in this legislation, a question whether the federal government is invading the States' police power, an "our federalism" question.