There is no such thing as an international trade secret. Unlike a patent or a trademark, a trade secret is not a registered right, so there is nothing to file anywhere and no treaty that grants protection across borders. What you actually own is a bundle of separate national rights that happen to look similar, because most of the world signed the same WTO agreement. Protecting a secret internationally means engineering that similarity into something enforceable, and knowing which forum can reach a defendant who never set foot in your country.
That reframing matters because it changes the question. The question is not “how do I register in Country X.” It is: does Country X recognize this as a protectable secret, will its courts give me a remedy in time to matter, can I get the evidence out of it, and if the answer to any of those is no, can a U.S. forum reach the conduct anyway.
Article 39 of the TRIPS Agreement is the closest thing to a global standard. It obliges WTO members to let natural and legal persons prevent information “lawfully within their control” from being disclosed or used without consent in a manner contrary to honest commercial practices, provided the information is secret, has commercial value because it is secret, and has been subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret.
Notice how closely that tracks the U.S. definition. That is not coincidence: the three-part test in 18 U.S.C. § 1839(3) and in the Uniform Trade Secrets Act is the same architecture. TRIPS exported it.
Two limits keep Article 39 from being the answer. First, TRIPS binds states, not private parties. In the United States and most member systems it is not self-executing, so you cannot sue a competitor under Article 39. It is a floor for legislatures, enforced through state-to-state WTO dispute settlement. Second, a floor is not a ceiling or a guarantee of practice. A country can have a compliant statute and courts that never grant a preliminary injunction, and a compliant statute with unusable procedure is worth very little.
Before 2016, trade secret protection inside the EU was wildly uneven. Directive (EU) 2016/943 fixed the worst of it. Member states had until June 2018 to implement a common definition (imported almost verbatim from TRIPS Article 39), a common set of unlawful acquisition, use, and disclosure categories, and a common menu of civil remedies: interim and final injunctions, corrective measures, and damages.
Two features are worth knowing. The Directive expressly protects reverse engineering and independent discovery as lawful acquisition, which mirrors U.S. law and forecloses arguments that a secret survives a competitor’s legitimate teardown. And it requires member states to preserve confidentiality during litigation itself, addressing the old problem that suing to protect a secret meant publishing it.
It is minimum harmonization. Member states may exceed the floor, and much of what determines outcomes stays national: procedure, evidence, how damages are computed, and the limitation period, which the Directive caps at six years but otherwise leaves to each state. Practically, a claim in Germany and the same claim in Greece are still different claims.
China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law is the operative instrument, and the 2017 and 2019 amendments changed it meaningfully. The 2019 round did three things that matter to a foreign secret holder: it broadened who can be liable beyond “business operators” to reach individuals and entities generally, it raised statutory damages and added punitive damages of up to five times actual loss for willful and serious infringement, and, most importantly, it shifted the burden of proof.
Under the amended Article 32, once the holder makes a preliminary showing that it took reasonable confidentiality measures and offers reasonable evidence of misappropriation, the burden moves to the alleged infringer to prove the information is not a trade secret or that it did not misappropriate it. That is a real change. The historical complaint about Chinese trade secret litigation was not the statute but the near-impossibility of proving what happened inside a defendant’s factory. Shifting that burden addresses the actual failure mode.
Treat this as a genuine improvement without treating it as a solution. Enforcement quality varies by court, and evidence collection remains the practical bottleneck.
This is the part most people miss. The Defend Trade Secrets Act incorporates 18 U.S.C. § 1837, which extends the chapter to conduct outside the United States in two circumstances: the offender is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident or an entity organized under U.S. law, or an act in furtherance of the offense was committed in the United States.
That second hook is broad. In Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp., 108 F.4th 458 (7th Cir. 2024), the Seventh Circuit held that the DTSA applies extraterritorially where a domestic act in furtherance occurred, and that once the statute is engaged, damages are not confined to U.S. sales. Hytera’s engineers took the source code in Malaysia, and the company was Chinese, but conduct touching the United States brought the scheme into an Illinois courtroom with worldwide exposure. Recruiting an employee in the U.S., a U.S. sale, marketing at a U.S. trade show, or a server in the U.S. can each be the hook.
Money judgments are worthless against a defendant with no assets you can reach. Section 337 of the Tariff Act, 19 U.S.C. § 1337, offers something else: the U.S. International Trade Commission can bar goods from entering the country when they are the product of an unfair method of competition, and trade secret misappropriation qualifies.
TianRui Group Co. v. International Trade Commission, 661 F.3d 1322 (Fed. Cir. 2011), is the case that made this a cross-border tool. The misappropriation occurred entirely in China, from a Chinese licensee, and the Federal Circuit still upheld the ITC’s jurisdiction. The reasoning is the useful part: the ITC is not regulating foreign conduct, it is regulating importation, and the domestic injury is the arrival of goods made with the stolen process. Section 337 also moves fast by litigation standards, typically resolving in 16 to 18 months, and the remedy is enforced by Customs rather than by a defendant’s willingness to pay.
Every doctrine above assumes you can prove what happened. Across borders, that assumption fails often.
U.S.-style discovery does not exist in most of the world. Civil law systems put fact-gathering in the judge’s hands and treat American document requests as offensive overreach. The Hague Evidence Convention is the formal channel and is slow, narrow, and subject to member declarations, most of which reject pretrial document discovery outright. Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale v. U.S. District Court, 482 U.S. 522 (1987), held the Convention is not the exclusive route when a U.S. court has personal jurisdiction, which is precisely why establishing U.S. jurisdiction over a foreign defendant is worth so much: it converts an evidence problem into a discovery order.
Running the other way, foreign blocking and data statutes can make compliance unlawful abroad, and 28 U.S.C. § 1782 lets an interested party in a foreign proceeding get U.S.-style discovery from someone found in a U.S. district, a tool that cuts both directions.
The strategic conclusion follows from all of it: contract and compartmentalization do more work than any statute. If the secret never leaves your jurisdiction in usable form, no forum problem arises.
Is there such a thing as an international trade secret? No. There is no registration, no filing, and no single instrument that covers the world the way the PCT does for patents or the Madrid Protocol does for trademarks. A trade secret exists only where a national law recognizes it, so protection is a stack of separate national rights that happen to overlap because most countries signed TRIPS. Article 39 of TRIPS sets a floor for WTO members but is not directly enforceable by a private party in most systems, including the United States.
Does the DTSA apply to theft that happens outside the United States? It can. 18 U.S.C. § 1837 extends the chapter to conduct abroad when the offender is a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, or an entity organized under U.S. law, or when any act in furtherance of the offense was committed in the United States. In Motorola Solutions v. Hytera (7th Cir. 2024) the court held that a domestic act in furtherance can support liability and worldwide damages, so a foreign defendant’s U.S. sales or U.S.-based recruiting can pull the whole scheme into a U.S. court.
What is Section 337 and why does it matter for trade secrets? Section 337 of the Tariff Act, 19 U.S.C. § 1337, lets the U.S. International Trade Commission block imports made through unfair methods of competition. In TianRui Group v. ITC (Fed. Cir. 2011) the court confirmed the ITC can reach misappropriation that occurred entirely in China, because the domestic injury is the importation of goods made with the stolen process. The remedy is an exclusion order enforced by Customs, not money, which is often the only leverage against a defendant with no U.S. assets.
How does the EU Trade Secrets Directive change things? Directive (EU) 2016/943 gave all member states a common definition of a trade secret and a common set of civil remedies, effective in national law from June 2018. Before it, protection ranged from robust to almost nonexistent depending on the country. It is a minimum harmonization measure, so member states may go further, and it still leaves procedure, damages calculation, and limitation periods (between one and six years) to national law.
Going further: Protecting IP When Manufacturing Overseas, step by step .
This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
The Fourth Circuit holds the Defend Trade Secrets Act can apply extraterritorially where a US-based act furthers the theft, reaching a Dutch former distributor.
The ITC banned imports of a Botox competitor for 21 months over trade-secret theft between Korean companies abroad, while reversing the strain-secrecy finding.
The Seventh Circuit upheld a $407 million DTSA award based on worldwide sales, holding the trade-secret statute reaches foreign misappropriation when an act in furtherance occurs in the United States.
A Washington federal court holds that the Defend Trade Secrets Act reaches a foreign defendant whenever an act in furtherance occurs in the United States, even an act the defendant did not commit.
A federal court kept a trade-secret suit against a Chinese competitor in Illinois, finding the defendant had not shown China an available and adequate forum, against the backdrop of the DTSA's reach and a worldwide TRO.
The ITC barred a Chinese chemical maker's imports for trade-secret theft committed in China, and the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court let the exclusion order stand despite a contrary result in Chinese courts.
The Federal Circuit held that the International Trade Commission may bar imports based on trade-secret misappropriation occurring entirely in China, opening the ITC as a forum for cross-border theft.
