Sure, but it’s an alternative way a large SaaS provider might attempt to defend whatever competitive advantage its code provides. I’m not saying it’s equivalent or even as good, just that a company with good data controls could probably grow large absent IP laws.
We’d probably also see rapid advances in homomorphic encryption to enable deployed software.
This seems like an odd comment. Yes there is law that protects trade secrets. But you still need to keep the secret a secret. If the secret gets out, it is no longer a trade secret.
The point is that it's difficult to become a big corporation without a monopoly, and it's difficult to maintain a monopoly without government help through patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Trade secrets--which have got nothing to do with with patents, copyrights, and trademarks and I should have just said has much--are another way to maintain a monopoly without government help, but trade secrets themselves are difficult to maintain if the secret gets out, and it almost always gets out.