By Barak Cohen, Christopher Veatch and John Sample ( May 31, 2018, 2:13 PM EDT) -- In early January 2017, just weeks before Donald Trump was to take the helm as the president of the United States, we assessed the government's efforts to protect against the persistent financial and strategic threat posed by the theft of valuable intellectual property from U.S. companies by foreign agents and others. As part of that assessment, we discussed the steps taken by the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration to protect trade secrets, steps that resulted in a significant increase in criminal trade secret prosecutions under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. We also attempted to predict the trajectory of criminal trade secret enforcement under the Trump administration. Now, approximately 16 months later, we are better positioned to assess the Trump administration's law enforcement priorities regarding intellectual property protection, and forecast the future of the DOJ's trade secret investigations and prosecutions....