Uniform Trade Secrets Act |Intellectual property law| |Sui
generis rights| The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), published
by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) 1979 and amended in 1985,
was a uniform act promulgated in an effort to provide legal
framework for improved trade secret protection for industry in
all 50 states within the United States of America. The UTSA
aimed to codify and harmonize standards and remedies regarding
misappropriation of trade secrets that had emerged in common law
on a state to state basis. A prefatory note to the UTSA states
some original motivations for the act: A valid patent provides a
legal monopoly for seventeen years in exchange for public
disclosure of an invention. If, however, the courts ultimately
decide that the Patent Office improperly issued a patent, an
invention has been disclosed to competitors with no
corresponding benefit. In view of the substantial number of
patents that the courts invalidate, many businesses now elect to
protect commercially valuable information