"Unfair competition" is a blanket term for various civil torts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_competition#Commercial_l.... It include things like spreading false information about a product or price fixing. I think copying technology could be fit into tort framework instead of a property framework as with patents. Instead of filing a suit saying: "I own this patent and he infringed," you'd have to file a suit along the lines of "he gained an unfair advantage by copying technology I spent a lot of time and money developing."

One of the nice things about torts is that they are very flexible. Common law judges have a lot of flexibility to look at actual controversies and tweek the rules to get the "right" results. Judges don't have any of this flexibility under the existing patent regime. The Patent Act says that basically anything is patentable, so judges have to follow the intent of Congress. Some important backstops against patentability, e.g. the exclusion of algorithms and laws of nature, are judicially-created, and moving patent law to a tort framework would give courts more leeway to create these sorts of exceptions in response to practical concerns.