§ 134A.001.Short Title

A short title for the statute that governs trade secret litigation in Texas.

This chapter may be cited as the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

Texas adopted the uniform act in 2013, later than most states, and amended it substantially in 2017 to track the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act. Before 2013 the subject was common law, and the elements varied between the courts of appeals.

The Act displaces that common law. The effect-on-other-law provision says the chapter displaces conflicting tort, restitutionary, and other civil remedies for misappropriation of a trade secret — so a plaintiff cannot plead around it with a conversion or unjust enrichment claim on the same facts.

What it leaves alone is equally important: contractual remedies, civil remedies not based on misappropriation, and criminal remedies all survive. A non-disclosure agreement is enforced as a contract, not under this chapter.

The chapter is short but dense — nine sections covering definitions, injunctive relief, damages, fees, preservation of secrecy, sealing, the displacement rule, and uniform construction.

The uniformity provision at the end is operative. It directs that the chapter be construed to make the law uniform among enacting states, so decisions from other uniform-act jurisdictions carry weight they would not otherwise have.

A separate three-year limitations period governs, running from discovery, with continuing misappropriation treated as a single claim.