Corporate Counsel Quotes Jonathan Poling on Trade Theft Investigations and China

Akin Gump international trade partner Jonathan Poling was quoted by Corporate Counsel for its article “Why Trade-Secret Theft Prosecutions vs. China Are Trending: Lawyers Explain,” on the increase in U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecution of trade misappropriation cases.

The article mentions several notable recent cases involving alleged theft of trade secrets by Chinese hackers, intelligence officers, employees and companies.

Poling, who formerly worked in the DOJ’s National Security Division’s Counterespionage Section, said that tension has existed within Justice regarding whether to pursue trade theft through criminal prosecution or to remain quiet and collect counterintelligence, perhaps even turning the foreign spy into a double agent.

He noted that these cases are not assembled overnight: “I imagine that some of these cases have been worked on for years now and there was a policy judgment in the Trump administration that we would start prosecuting these cases. I think the sense is on these cases that there’s really not much to be learned or gained from an intelligence perspective, and the need for deterrence outweighs whatever value there is to learn from the intelligence efforts that are occurring through the Chinese to acquire U.S. trade secrets.”