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Trade Secrets: Protection Best Practices

By R. Todd Wilson All businesses have trade secrets. Stated slightly differently, every business has information that it would rather keep confidential. A trade secret can be any useful information that is not generally known. Trade secrets encompass both technical information such as formulas, designs, tools, manufacturing processes, and computer source code as well as business secrets including customer lists, employee lists, financial and accounting data, product plans and marketing plans. Such "confidential" or "proprietary" information is usually essential to the success of the business. Often, however, companies do little or nothing to protect that knowledge. A trade secret is a confidential practice, method, process, design, or other information used by a company to compete with other businesses. Even failed research and development efforts, so called "negative knowledge," is a trade secret. In either case, trade secrets cannot cover information that is generally known to professionals in the field or generalized know-how. If others had access to the same knowledge, a company's ability to succeed, or even to survive, would be significantly impaired. Therefore, trade secrets should be carefully guarded. As with other forms of intellectual property, trade secrets can be valuable to a company's growth and competitive advantage. In fact, because technology changes so rapidly, trade secret protection is in some cases the most readily available intellectual property right for many businesses. Additionally, trade secrets can have more immediate economic benefits in that the right to use a trade secret can be licensed or sold. However, in order to be effective, the trade secret owner must take the appropriate steps to protect against misappropriation of trade secrets by its competitors. To continue reading click here.

Full post as published by The Trade Secrets Vault on October 22, 2008 (boomark / email).