Comparative Study of Cyber Economic Espionage in Iranian and American Criminal Law

Cyber economic espionage is one of the types of espionage which is shaped by business and economic information in the context of cyberspace via computer and telecommunications systems. In fact, this type of espionage with respect to the subject of the offense including trade secrets is particularly related to cyber espionage. This form of espionage has not been independently considered as a crime in Iranian criminal law, and particularly, the criminal protection of business secrets has been only incorporated in electronic business law in order to protect legal and fair exchanges in the context of electronic exchanges. This has led the criminal law to be exclusively employed in electronic exchanges and is not valid in the context of espionage of trade secrets. Cyber economic espionage can be investigated based on the law of computer crimes from which Article 3 has been allocated to computer espionage. We hence made an attempt to explore the constructive elements of this crime by a comparative study of American law of economic espionage and we aimed at identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the laws of our country in the realm of fight against cyber economic espionage.