In part one of this Law360 series, Gregory Lantier and Thomas Sprankling discussed the limited appellate case law, as well as where and when the appellate decisions may be issued. Part two takes aim at a tougher question—what kinds of questions will the early DTSA appellate decisions resolve?

Excerpt: TTo make these predictions, we consider how courts have interpreted other intellectual property statutes. First, the early appellate decisions involving the America Invents Act, or AIA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, and the Copyright Act of 1976 include certain common threads—careful explanations of the new statute’s innovations, attempts to apply the new statutory scheme to new technology, and constitutional challenges. We expect that these themes may also play out as appellate courts interpret the DTSA. Second, a significant Patent Act issue in recent years has been the extent to which the statutory scheme differs from common law principles. An analogous tension may exist as courts try to determine whether the principles governing the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, or UTSA, also apply to the DTSA.