BROOKINGS – 04/05/2020
Marietje Schaake
Technology companies increasingly hide the world’s most powerful algorithms and business models behind the shield of trade secret protection. The legitimacy of these protections needs to be revisited when they obscure companies’ impact on the public interest or the rule of law. In 2016 and 2018, the United States and the European Union each adopted trade secret protection laws that fail to clarify exemptions for algorithms and other digitized processes used by governments but built by private companies.