A brief history of trade secret Law covers the definition of a trade secret, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), and enforcement options. A trade secret can be broadly defined as is information that can be used in the operation of a business or other enterprise that is both sufficiently valuable and sufficiently secret to give the owner an actual or potential competitive advantage. A trade secret cannot be specifically defined because each secret is specific to a particular business operation. Federal patent and trademark laws have not been covered in various laws of each state, while trade secret protection has been so legislated at the federal level of government. Litigation on trade secrets was generally done in state court systems. The 1978 release of the Second Restatement of Torts also eliminated the Section 757 definition of trade secrets that had been a legal guide for trade secret protection since 1939. Therefore, beginning in the 1980s, many states adopted the trade secret law known as the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA), which defines a protectable trade secret. Among UTSAs provisions that go beyond the 1939 Restatement of Torts definition is the extension of protection to a trade secret owner who has not yet had an opportunity or obtained the wherewithal to put a secret to use. Many other provisions of UTSA are described. UTSA provides definitions of trade secret and trade secret misappropriation and offers just one statute of limitations for various property, quasicontract, and violation of fiduciary relationship theories of noncontract liability used in common law. UTSA was not uniformly adopted by states, so the U.S. Congress in 1996 enacted the Economic Espionage Act (EEA), which made some changes.