Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed a bill Wednesday allowing companies to sue to defend their trade secrets.

The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, adds a civil component to the federal law making it a crime to steal intellectual property. Lawmakers said criminal penalties remain an important deterrent, but that the FBI's resources to investigate and prosecute trade secret theft are limited.

"One of the biggest advantages that we've got in this global economy is that we innovate," Obama said at a signing ceremony while flanked by a bipartisan congressional delegation. "We come up with new services, new goods, new products, new technologies. Unfortunately, all too often, some of our competitors, instead of competing with us fairly, are trying to steal these trade secrets from American companies, and that means a loss of American jobs, a loss of American markets, a loss of American leadership."

The theft of trade secrets costs the economy more than $300 billion a year, according to the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property. That's comparable to the annual U.S. exports to Asia.

The bill was largely uncontroversial, passing the Senate 87-0 and the House 410-2. Only two "constitutional" conservatives, Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., opposed it.

"I'm always happy when we pass bills," Obama said, repeating a common line at bill signing ceremonies. He also used the opportunity to push Congress to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade pact involving the United States and 12 other Pacific Rim nations, which he said would strengthen the protection of trade secrets even further.

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