Obernolte introduces bill to protect American companies from foreign actors

U.S. Congressman Jay Obernolte (CA-23) reintroduced the Protect American Trade Secrets Act on Monday to help companies protect their trade secrets from overseas theft, including at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. The bill will ensure companies can sue individuals and organizations found to be stealing U.S. trade secrets, including the commission of intellectual property (IP) theft, regardless of where they reside or may have fled to.

“The recent incident with the Chinese balloon is a powerful illustration of the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, but China’s intelligence-gathering efforts are not new. Malign foreign actors have worked for years to unlawfully appropriate our technology and trade secrets using a variety of methods,” said Rep. Obernolte. “This bill will ensure American companies have the ability to fight back against intellectual property theft at the hands of foreign actors and will help keep our technological developments secure.”

In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has undertaken a strategic project of massive intellectual property theft and industrial espionage with the goal of surpassing the United States both technologically and economically. As recently as 2019, one in five North American-based corporations said that Chinese firms had stolen their intellectual property within the last year. The resulting cost to U.S. companies is estimated to be $600 billion annually.

H.R. 844, the Protect American Trade Secrets Act,secures the ability for U.S. companies to sue foreign actors who steal trade secrets and intellectual property by making a key modification to the 2016 Defend Trade Secrets Act to ensure the law applies extraterritorially. This will ensure that U.S. courts maintain jurisdiction for private rights of action against the theft of trade secrets, including intellectual property, when the perpetrators reside in or flee to other countries.

Read the bill text here.