산업스파이에 관한 미국의 최근판례와 입법의 동향

Economic espionage is considered a nationwide threat to the U.S. economy. When President Barack Obama visited the NCCIC on January 13, 2015, he stated that cyber threats are the most serious challenge that the U.S. confronts today. Recently in the U.S., two core clauses of the EEA, §1831 and §1832,　were amended for harsher punishments. Nevertheless, the EEA is generally regarded as ineffective for protecting American companies and the U.S. economy from foreign economic espionage. It is argued that the EEA should also be amended to punish those who transfer trade secrets to foreign countries regardless of their intention to benefit the foreign countries, and that another clause should be added to allow individuals and companies to bring suit directly based on §1832 of the EEA. Some desire treaties banning economic espionage between countries, or think that suing foreign governments or entities that sponsored economic espionage should be allowed. The trends of recent court decisions in the U.S. show that there are fewer trade secret theft cases based on the EEA than the UTSA. However, the increased number of EEA cases in the last three years indicates the U.S. Department of Justice's strong desire to protect American companies' trade secrets from foreign economic espionage. Also, it is broadly recognized in the U.S. that not only are the detection of cyber-crimes and harsh sanctions necessary, companies should keep effective cyber security systems—monitoring and surveillance, hardening targets, survivability and recovery, and quick reaction against hackers—according to the level of importance of each trade secret through administrative regulations.