Trade Secrets Strategy

Author: Marsha Simone Cadogan, MSC IPTL | 2 min read|

Trade secrets relate to information in your business that is crucial to your success because it has economic value and is a secret, kept confidential, and disclosed only to a few persons. Protecting this information can be vital to the continued relevance of your products and services in consumer markets. An effective trade secrets strategy helps to safeguard commercial investments – especially when the knowledge is crucial to the continued success of your business or project.

The following measures, when used as part of an effective IP strategy, is useful to reduce the risk of trade secrets misappropriation:

• If you must disclose the information to others, the benefits of a well-drafted non-disclosure agreement helps to protect the confidentiality of your information.

• Monitor how licensees use your trade secret, especially when sub-licensees have access to the information.

• Take reasonable efforts to keep the information secret. This includes quality control measures and periodically checking if your non-disclosure agreement is up to date with changes you have made in your business operations.

• Businesses with sub-branches in other jurisdictions should also ensure that measures used to protect trade secrets are in line with legal interpretations of trade secrets rules in those jurisdictions. Although many countries are moving towards the recognition of specific laws on trade secrets, there are still differences between these laws, which ultimately impact the level of protection and redress right holders can receive. For example, the reasonable efforts threshold may be treated differently on a case by case basis, and even between jurisdictions.

This article is for general information purposes only and is not intended to be legal advise. For legal advise on protecting trade secrets, you can contact Marsha Simone at 416-748-9236 ext. 2.