<story><title>Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from competitor Jawbone</title><url>https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/14/6-fitbit-employees-charged-with-stealing-trade-secrets-from-competitor-jawbone/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>koolba</author><text>&amp;gt; Six current and former Fitbit employees were charged in a federal indictment Thursday filed in San Jose for allegedly being in possession of trade secrets stolen from competitor Jawbone, according to information from the Department of Justice.&lt;p&gt;Wht makes this a criminal matter as opposed to a civil one?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>em3rgent0rdr</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know why you are being downvoted.  That is a very legitimate question.  I would think that since trade secret theft is really simply a violation of a private &lt;i&gt;contract&lt;/i&gt;, that it should therefore simply be a civil offense.  However, it seems that the people who made the U.S. Economic Espionage Act of 1996 [1] (which is what made theft of a trade secret a federal crime) and of The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 [2] (which strengthened that) believe otherwise.  From the title of those acts, I&amp;#x27;d guess they argued it should be a federal crime because of the risk of foreign entities gaining US company knowledge and&amp;#x2F;or harm to US economy in general.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Economic_Espionage_Act_of_1996&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Economic_Espionage_Act_of_1996&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Defend_Trade_Secrets_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Defend_Trade_Secrets_Act&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Fitbit employees charged with stealing trade secrets from competitor Jawbone</title><url>https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/14/6-fitbit-employees-charged-with-stealing-trade-secrets-from-competitor-jawbone/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>koolba</author><text>&amp;gt; Six current and former Fitbit employees were charged in a federal indictment Thursday filed in San Jose for allegedly being in possession of trade secrets stolen from competitor Jawbone, according to information from the Department of Justice.&lt;p&gt;Wht makes this a criminal matter as opposed to a civil one?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>williamscales</author><text>Theft of trade secrets is a specific criminal offense: 18 U.S. Code § 1832 - Theft of trade secrets (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;1832&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;1832&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>