This Article was Originally Published in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, March 13, 2006 The Economic Espionage Act – Is It Finally Catching On? by Press Millen & Todd Sullivan The drumbeat is still faint, but might be getting steadier. In Ohio, a former employee of a hydraulic gear pump manufacturer pleads guilty to selling his former employer’s trade secrets to a South African competitor. Last month, a Connecticut man received two years in federal prison for stealing the source code for Microsoft’s Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 and then offering to sell it on the Internet. An FBI sting operation nabbed him. An executive of a California company pleads guilty to taking his former company’s engineering notes in hopes that it will boost his success in his new job. The Economic Espionage Act In each case the prosecutions proceeded in federal court under the Economic Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1831, et seq. (the “EEA”), a federal law passed in 1996 to facilitate criminal prosecutions for theft of trade secrets. The EEA created two related crimes. The first, set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 1831, created a new federal crime for stealing trade secrets for the benefit of foreign governments, instrumentalities and agents. The new crime recognized that in the post-Cold War world, competition between the United States and its enemies was no longer just ideological but now contained a significant economic element. ...