Lawmakers have been urged to consider the early passage of a bill declaring "economic espionage" as a criminal act, imposing penalty against violators, a press release from Congress said.

Rep. Diosdado Macapagal Arroyo (2nd District, Camarines Sur) and Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2nd district, Pampanga) filed House Bill 1471, or the proposed Economic Espionage and Protection of Proprietary Information Act, to give adequate protection to proprietary economic information.

Arroyo said economic espionage is committed by anyone who steals, wrongfully appropriates, takes, carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception, obtains proprietary economic information.

It is also committed by anyone who wrongfully copies, duplicates, sketches, draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates, or conveys proprietary economic information," he said.

Proprietary economic information means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic or engineering information, the press release said.

It also includes, but is not limited to, data, plans, tools, mechanisms, compounds, formulas, designs, prototype, processes, procedures, programs, codes or commercial strategies, whether tangible or intangible and whether stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing, it added.

The bill provides that any natural or juridical person who commits economic espionage, whether or not in the aid of foreign nations, governments, corporations, institutions, or instrumentalities, shall be fined an amount equivalent to the economic value of such proprietary information, the press release also said.*

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