Trade Secret Protection in USMCA and Its Implications for Korea

Abstract

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which was signed on November 30, 2018, is the result of a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by its member states. During the negotiation process of the USMCA, one of the goals for the United States was to modernize NAFTA into a 21st century trade agreement, including an extensive amendment to the intellectual property (IP) chapter. Although NAFTA was the first international trade pact to include commitments to protect intellectual property rights, the US government assesses that the 24-year-old NAFTA was insufficient to reflect the rapid evolution of technological innovation and growth in the digital economy. For the most part, the IP chapter in the USMCA mirrors the IP chapter in the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (TPP), from which the United States withdrew in January 2017, except for some revisions to reincorporate suspended provisions and add additional requirements. This shows that the United States’ goal in the TPP – the global standardization of the US IP system – has continued in the USMCA. Indeed, the Trade Promotion Authority, under which recent US agreements were negotiated, explicitly states the negotiating objective of promoting intellectual property rules that “… reflect a standard of protection similar to that found in United States law.”