PARIS — Canada needs legislation that targets corporate espionage, an Ottawa lawyer said Thursday in the wake of a furor over a major French company's assertion that it's been victimized in the global "economic war" over industrial secrets.
The automobile manufacturer Renault suspended three senior employees for allegedly giving away secrets about the company's multibillion-dollar research effort to develop environmentally friendly electric cars.
"Unfortunately, the affair appears serious," Industry Minister Eric Besson told a French broadcaster Thursday.
"The expression 'economic war,' while sometimes outrageous, for once is appropriate."
Besson called for improved industrial security at companies that receive public money, though an MP with President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement party said government legislation is needed.
Bernard Carayon said France should follow in the footsteps of the United States, which has a law with stiff civil sanctions for employees who sell corporate secrets to domestic or foreign competitors or foreign governments.
"Our companies are more and more vulnerable," Carayon told the newspaper Le Parisien, adding that technological theft is like a "second culture" in such countries as Russia and China.
Ottawa lawyer Stuart McCormack, an intellectual-property specialist, said the Canadian government in the past considered adopting a law along the lines of the U.S. Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
The UTSA allows courts to impose injunctions and protective orders.
Damages, including punitive damages, can also be levelled. Such a law would replace the current Canadian approach that relies on common-law precedents.
McCormack said a law would be useful in protecting Canadian commercial and scientific secrets from foreign spies, as well as in cases of domestic espionage.
"It would create clarity in the area and make life easier for lawyers and help individuals understand what their rights and obligations are."
Many Canadian companies now use contractual agreements with employees to ensure corporate secrets are protected, he said.
There have been occasional allegations of industrial espionage in Canada involving foreign governments, and private corporations and individuals have been accused of stealing intellectual property.
In 2006, WestJet Airlines Ltd. had to apologize and pay a $15.5-million settlement to Air Canada after it admitted spying on its rival's internal website.
Reid Morden, the former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said he thinks corporations should be responsible for guarding their own secrets.
A law in the Criminal Code is unnecessary and would invite unnecessary interference by government prosecutors in the private sector, he said.
poneil@postmedia.com
No comments:
Post a Comment