The counterplan incentivizes innovation---it’s also more cost effective than patent protections.
Lemley 8 – William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Law School Program in Law, Science & Technology, as well as a founding partner of the law firm of Durie Tangri LLP
Lemley, Mark A., The Surprising Virtues of Treating Trade Secrets as IP Rights (June 1, 2008). Stanford Law Review, Vol. 61, p. 311, 2008, Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 358, Available at SSRN:
In this article, I suggest that trade secrets can be justified as a form, not of traditional property, but of intellectual property (IP). The incentive justification for encouraging new inventions is straightforward. Granting legal protection for those new inventions not only encourages their creation, but enables an inventor to sell her idea. And while we have other laws that encourage inventions, notably patent law, trade secrecy offers some significant advantages for inventors over patent protection. It is cheaper and quicker to obtain, since it doesn’t require government approval, and it extends to protection of types of business and process information that likely wouldn’t be patentable.