Elon Law Professor David Levine’s article detailing weaknesses of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and its relationship to cybersecurity was published Dec. 1 in the Washington and Lee Law Review Online.
The DTSA is intended to give more power to trade secret holders to fight those who steal their trade secrets. While cyberespionage against U.S. corporations is a real problem, Levine explains in his article that “the DTSA solves a problem that does not exist—a lack of legal remedies—while failing to address and, in this case, worsening the real problem—a lack of robust cybersecurity.” Given its potential negative impact on improving corporate cybersecurity standards, Levine concludes that the DTSA must be rejected.
Levine’s article appears one day before a U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing about the DTSA legislation. At the Senate hearing, law scholar Sharon Sandeen will present a statement prepared collaboratively with Levine opposing DTSA on grounds that it does too little to fight cybersecurity while creating a range of legal and economic concerns.
David S. Levine is an associate professor at Elon University School of Law, a visiting research collaborator at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and an affiliate scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.