On Thursday, March 17, 2016 Washington and Lee law professor Christopher Seaman participated in a panel debate at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. The debate was organized by the Penn Intellectual Property Group as part of the 2016 symposium, Innovation and IP Assets. Professor Seaman’s panel discussed the pending Defend Trade Secrets Act (S. 1890 and H.R. 3326). If adopted, the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) would create a new private, civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation under federal law.
Professor Seaman has previously written on the topic of the DTSA in an article, The Case Against Federalizing Trade Secrecy, 101 Virginia Law Review 317 (2015), and a letter signed by 42 law professors opposed to the DTSA. Also participating on the panel were Mr. James Pooley, an attorney in private practice who was the Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization and author of the a leading treatise on trade secrets law, and Professor Sharon Sandeen of Mitchell Hamline School of Law, who is an internationally recognized expert on trade secrets law and author of the first casebook on the subject.
