In their Lawfare article The Cloud Act Is Not a Tool for Theft of Trade Secrets, Swire and Hemmings explain the allegations from the European Union that the Act is a tool for economic espionage, and why those concerns are mistaken. The article gives three reasons why prosecutors are highly unlikely to use the Cloud Act to steal intellectual property: (1) the U.S. has long-standing normative and diplomatic interests in preventing the abuse of economic espionage; (2) even under the Cloud Act, the U.S. can obtain information only via a lawful order pursuant to a criminal investigation, and (3) the Economic Espionage Act provides significant protections to the owners of trade secrets at issue in litigation that would apply in a criminal investigation as well.
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