In the Middle Ages, craftsmen formed guilds and kept the methodology of their trade a secret.  This allowed them to maintain their competitive advantage, and to keep good wages.

Today, these same trade secrets are kept by companies through the patent and trade secret laws. 

In order for Massachusetts to maintain it unique value proposition, we need strong patent and trade secret laws to protect our inventions, our ideas, from being copied.  With a computer and the Internet, ideas can be copied in a matter of minutes to the far corners of the world, to places where manufacturing is cheap, where copying can be done for a fraction of the cost in Massachusetts.  I have seen projects cost corporations millions of dollars in research and development to produce, employing many local engineers at good salaries, be copied by competitors for a fraction of the development costs.  The competition enters a market without risk for a fraction of the cost, and the original company looses out.  After two or three similar incidents, the company will just stop investing in the research, because it is not cost effective.  And the jobs disappear.

We need strong patent laws in the United States to protect our ideas, to protect our inventors, to protect our jobs, from infringers.  For the past several years, many in Congress have been working hard to water down our patent laws, trying to make it easier for copiers to steal ideas.  As an Intellectual Property Executive, I know the impact of these changes on the Massachusetts economy, and I will fight efforts to weaken our protection in the global economy.