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61 Stan. L. Rev. 311 (2008-2009)
The Surprising Virtues of Treating Trade Secrets as IP Rights

handle is hein.journals/stflr61 and id is 315 raw text is: THE SURPRISING VIRTUES OF TREATING TRADE SECRETS AS IP RIGHTS Mark A. Lemley * INTRODUCTION....................................................................312 I. TRADE SECRET D OCTRINE ........................................................... ............315 A . The History of Trade Secret Law ...............................................................315 B. The Scope of Trade Secret Law ....................................................... ......317 II. EFFORTS TO UNDERSTAND TRADE SECRET THEORY ........................................319 A. Tort Law .............................................320 B. Contract Law..............................................................................................323 C. Property Law..............................................................................................324 D. Commercial Morality and Other Theories .................................................327 E. Bone's Challenge: Does Trade Secret Law Serve a Purpose?...................328 III. CONSTRUCTING AN IP THEORY OF TRADE SECRETS.........................................329 A. Incentives To Invent ...................................................................................329 B . Incentives To D isclose................................................................................332 C. Channeling Protection Between Patents and Trade Secrets ......................338 IV. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRADE SECRET LAW ..........................................................341 A. The Centrality of Secrecy ............................................................................342 B. The Relationship Between Trade Secret Law and Other Torts ...................344 C. Other Implications for Trade Secret Doctrine .........:..................................348 1. Reasonable efforts to protect secrecy ...................................................348 2. Contracting around trade secret law ....................................................350 3. IP, property, and absolute dominion................................................351 * William H. Neukom Professor, Stanford Law School; of counsel, Keker & Van Nest LLP. © 2008 Mark A. Lemley and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Thanks to Chuck Adams, John Barton, Bob Bone, Dick Craswell, Zohar Efroni, Paul Goldstein, Wendy Gordon, Tait Graves, Joe Grundfest, Rose Hagan, Eran Kahana, Larry Lessig, David Levine, Jacqueline Lipton, Rob Merges, Mike Meurer, Roger Milgrim, Michael Risch, Sharon Sandeen, Peter Swire, Rebecca Tushnet, and participants in workshops at Stanford Law School and the IP Scholars' Conference for discussions of these issues or comments on a prior draft. This Article does not address perhaps the most divisive issue facing the law of trade secrecy: whether it is trade secret law (5983 cites in Westlaw's allcases and tp-all databases combined) or trade secrets law (a mere 2144 cites). Westlaw search conducted February 15, 2008. I use trade secret throughout-who am I to argue with 73.6 percent of all courts and commentators?-but that doesn't mean I'm taking a definitive position on the issue. 311

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