Beneficiaries Of Misconduct: A Direct Approach To IT Theft

Almost a century ago, the United States Supreme Court declared that the prohibition against unfair competition serves to protect fundamental values and important rights. “[T]he right to acquire property by honest labor or the conduct of a lawful business is as much entitled to protection as the right to guard property already acquired. It is this right that furnishes the basis of the jurisdiction . . . of unfair competition.” The idea is simple: it is unfair to competitors and inconsistent with basic notions of market competition to allow market actors to steal the work or property of another and use that asset to obtain a competitive advantage over companies that play by the rules. There are a number of settings, however, where current legal recourse is insufficient to address such misconduct; particularly when the item taken is information technology (IT).

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