President Barack Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 into law on Wednesday, giving companies the ability for the first time to use federal law to sue those who misappropriate their confidential information.
The law is considered one of the most important changes to intellectual property law in decades, as trade secrets were previously the province of state courts. Tech companies, in particular, welcomed the new law. And attorneys say the long-awaited federal legislation can provide for powerful remedies to companies that find themselves scrambling to protect the disclosure of all sorts of proprietary data. (You can read the text of the law here.)
