Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Jorda on Trade Secrets

Academic

: Jorda on Trade Secrets

2003 IPO Survey Results: Patent/Trade Secret Complementariness No. 17

In an earlier blog I referred to the 2003 Survey of the Intellectual Property Owners on Strategic Management of Intellectual Property and related that the results showed, according to 88% of the responses, that the really important intellectual assets are skills and knowledge which implicates trade secrets.

Among other specific findings in this IPO Survey anent trade secrets are the following:

All but 6% of responding companies do compete on the basis of proprietary technology.

Loss of trade secret protection would damage 80% of respondents’ ability to sustain their competitive advantage.

All but 3% of respondents build competitive advantage on internally developed know-how.

Only 1/3 of respondents would maintain R&D spending after losing trade secret protection.

Over 2/3 of respondents report that NCAs and NDAs are effective in their industry.

43% of respondents agree that many of their most important ideas cannot be effectively protected with patents due to serious limits to patent protection.

67% of respondents believe that most patents are not thought to be insuperable obstacles and can be invented around.

Two-thirds of respondents agreed that trade secret law is an effective way for them to retain control of important technology.

In light of these results, let no-one treat trade secrets as the “black sheep,” “orphan,” “stepchild,” or “ugly sister” of the intellectual property system, as the members of the “Patent über alles/trade secrets are the cesspool of the patent system” school of thought are wont to do.

Full post as published by Jorda on Trade Secrets on March 14, 2008 (boomark / email).