I have introduced the Defend Trade Secrets Act — a bipartisan bill that will help Utah’s businesses safeguard their most valuable information by allowing them to protect trade secrets in federal court.

By Orrin Hatch

Featured in the  Deseret News

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Utah has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the top states in the nation for business and innovation. But to ensure that Utah companies continue to thrive, we must do more to protect trade secrets.

Trade secrets are the groundbreaking ideas that give businesses a competitive advantage. They range from unique production and manufacturing processes to food recipes and business plans. This critical form of intellectual property is not only invaluable to individual business owners; it’s also directly responsible for creating millions of jobs in our state.

But a lack of federal legal protections leaves trade secrets vulnerable to theft — an oversight that costs our economy billions of dollars every year. 

I am committed to fixing this problem. That’s why I have introduced the Defend Trade Secrets Act — a bipartisan bill that will help Utah’s businesses safeguard their most valuable information by allowing them to protect trade secrets in federal court. 

Under current law, companies have few legal options to recover their losses when trade secrets are stolen. For example, if a disgruntled employee steals a Utah company’s confidential information and leaks it to a competitor in Colorado, attorneys must navigate a complex labyrinth of state laws just to bring suit. This cumbersome process can take weeks, which is an eternity in a trade secrets case. During this time, the likelihood that valuable intellectual property falls into the wrong hands increases every day, as does the potential for permanent damage to the company.

My bill addresses this problem by creating a uniform federal standard that organizations can turn to when their trade secrets are stolen. This federal standard keeps companies from getting bogged down in state laws by allowing business owners to take their case directly to a federal court. Essentially, my legislation removes an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, buying businesses precious time to recover stolen information. 

When it is enacted into law, this legislation will be a boon to Utah’s business community. After all, companies across our state depend on trade secrets for their day-to-day business operations. For example, Café Rio uses trade secrets to protect signature recipes, such as its cilantro-lime ranch dressing and its famous sweet pork. DoTerra relies on similar protections to safeguard the manufacturing processes for the essential oils you might use when you get sick. And technology companies like Domo count on trade secret laws to shield confidential codes and algorithms from competitors. 

Without trade secrets, these companies would not be able to compete, much less provide jobs for thousands of Utahns. That’s why protecting this information from theft is so critical to our economy. Consider that U.S. businesses lose between $160 billion and $480 billion annually from trade secret misappropriation. This staggering statistic represents thousands of jobs lost every year.

 My bill, the Defend Trade Secrets Act, stops the bleeding by strengthening the ability of American companies to defend their most valuable information from theft. For the past two years, I’ve worked tirelessly alongside Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) to draft and build support for this legislation, which already has 65 bipartisan co-sponsors in the Senate and countless endorsements from private companies and nonprofit organizations. The bill is scheduled to pass the Senate on Monday with broad bipartisan support. The House is eager to take up the legislation shortly thereafter so it can head to the president's desk to be signed into law.

By providing American companies with more legal options to protect their most confidential information, this bill will catalyze even greater innovation — not only in Utah but across the nation. I am grateful for the Utah companies who are supporting this commonsense reform, and I urge my fellow lawmakers to follow suit by supporting the Defend Trade Secrets Act.