Business Strategies to Protect Trade Secret and Confidential Information

Many businesses’ value is derived primarily from their intangible assets, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, domain names, and trade secrets. Entrepreneurs are frequently proactive in obtaining patents, copyrights, and trademarks to ensure long-term success.

However, entrepreneurs need to struggle constantly to safeguard the trade secrets and confidential information of their business. A trade secret is any business technique or procedure that is largely unknown outside of the company. Trade secret information provides a business with a competitive edge over its rivals.

A business must make a reasonable attempt to protect the knowledge from the public to qualify as a secret under applicable law. A company must make a reasonable attempt to hide the ability from the public; the secret must have inherent economic worth, and the secret must include information.

Trade secrets are considered to be an integral component of a business’s intellectual property. Unlike a patent, a secret is unknown to the public. This article will discuss many methods and strategies that company owners may use to keep their secrets and sensitive information safe from theft.

Meaning of Secret Trade

Trade secrets may take many forms, including a unique formula, device, pattern, design, recipe, technique, or practice that is not readily apparent to others and is utilized to establish a business that has the edge over rivals or adds value to consumers.

If the secret holder fails to protect the secret or if the secret is independently discovered, disclosed, or becomes public information, the secret loses its protection. For example, KFC Recipe Formula is a Trade secret.

Necessary Business strategies for the protection of Trade Secret 

Businesses often make use of trade secrets. Indeed, many companies depend almost entirely on trade secrets to safeguard their intellectual property (although, in many cases, they may not even be aware that trade secrets are legally protected).

Therefore, it is critical to ensure that businesses take all required precautions to safeguard their trade secrets successfully. These measurements would include the following:

1. Protect your secrecy with Non-Disclosure Agreements:

Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreements with workers and business partners are an excellent first line of defence and have received judicial approval. In addition, courts have ruled that its entire corporate strategy is crucial for preserving secrecy and demonstrating that it safeguards trade secrets.

Companies should also establish processes to ensure that company rules are implemented and record safeguards and compliance. In many instances, adopting particular strategies to support elements of a company’s confidentiality rules is praised.

Such may include requiring workers to return private information when they leave a business, designating papers as secret, and not allowing anyone employee or third party access to a whole process, formula, or other sensitive information.

2. Physical and electronic access control

Most businesses understand the need for physical and technological security in safeguarding intellectual property, and courts are increasingly demanding it. For example, Japanese courts have determined that for information to be considered “kept secret” and therefore protected under Japan’s unfair competition laws for trade secrets, a business must “install physical and technological access barriers.”

Companies should also prepare to protect sensitive information in their physical and information technology (IT) security systems, limit system access, by utilizing advanced solutions, such as Synergis access control and regularly evaluate and upgrade these systems.

3. Prioritize trade secret protection

Today, cyber threats, information digitalization, complicated supply chains, and personnel mobility across businesses and continents all raise the danger of a company’s essential trade secrets being compromised.

Businesses must beef up security and, more critically, implement procedures to safeguard secrets to safeguard vital business information. This strategy assists businesses in mitigating risks while also satisfying the “reasonable measures” requirement in the case of secret compromise. Failure to do so may jeopardize a business’s profits, reputation, and competitive advantage.

4. Create supply chain policies and processes

Third parties, such as joint venture partners, suppliers, distributors, and even consumers, may get access to a business’s secrets for manufacturing, product development, or other partnerships. Due to the possibility of theft from these partners, it is critical to have procedures to safeguard sensitive assets.

Third-party Non-Disclosure Agreements may be regarded as an adequate level of protection, although they are insufficient. Additionally, businesses should include trade secret protection into their due diligence criteria, perform continuous evaluations of their procedures for maintaining information confidentiality, and regularly communicate with third parties about secret protection requirements.

5. Conduct training sessions for employees and vendors

Training is critical for both workers and third parties to understand the expectations around the management of such information. Failure to follow these easy procedures – which may fall beyond the scope of standard corporate training – has resulted in some businesses being denied legal protection. At the same time, several companies have successfully prosecuted former employees for theft based on their corporate training procedures.

6. Form a Trade Secret Team

When no one inside a business is accountable for safeguarding trade secrets and other sensitive information, problems emerge. Courts have not been kind to companies that have not designated a person or group to be in charge of trade secret protection. Additionally, best practices include creating a cross-functional team of individuals capable of ensuring that trade secret protection rules are implemented.

For example, in one of the incidences where a former accounting employee was prosecuted for breaching trade secrets by accessing the company’s customer lists, the prosecution was dismissed when it was discovered that the public also had access to client names.

The names were placed on the business’s reception desk, employee desks, computers shared with another company in the building, PCs where passwords were left on the desk or yelled across the room, and in places accessible to the public and cleaning personnel. Nobody seemed to be in charge of safeguarding this information.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the subject.  specialized IP professionals who can assist you in filing Trade Secret Litigation. Apart from this, HHS Lawyers and Legal Consultants also provide you with services relating to Trade Secret Litigation enforcement, such as:

1.  To perform periodic inspections as part of its vigilance against Trade Secret infringement,
2. To seize and destroy all counterfeited copies with the help of the police force and 
3. To assist the client in filing a Trade Secret infringement complaint against the infringer. 

If you need any legal assistance with your legal issues, please do not hesitate to contact lawyers in Dubai UAE.