Trade Secrets Should be Protected. But How?
It sounds like the start of a joke, it’s so obvious: how do you protect a trade secret? The answer should be “don’t tell anybody.” Yes, that’s true, but it’s not as obvious as you think, and the question itself is one that many business owners don’t think about.
Why Protect Trade Secrets?
Let’s imagine that one day you find out that information or something else that you consider to be a trade secret ends up getting disseminated to the general public or to your competitors.
One of the first things a court will ask you if you sue to protect those trade secrets is what did you do to keep the information secret or private? In fact, that question is written into the law—to be defined as a trade secret, one of the things the trade secret owner must show is that it took measures to protect or keep the trade secret from the public.
A Lot of Exposure
Protecting trade secrets seems easy until you realize that a trade secret is no good unless it’s actually benefitting your company, and to do that, it takes employees to see, utilize, put into action, or work with your valuable and private trade secret information. So with employee eyes on your trade secrets, how do you simultaneously protect it?
Using Agreements
One obvious way is through agreements, whereby employees acknowledge trade secrets, what they are, and their value to your company. Having signed nondisclosure agreements or confidentiality agreements that obligate others to keep the information they are exposed to private is a very good way of showing you treat the information as private.
Who is Accessing Information?
If you can, develop a system whereby anybody who accesses or uses trade secret information, has to log in, or sign in. In other words, develop a system where you know who is using your trade secrets, and when. This shows you are keeping tight controls on who gets to see this valuable information.
If trade secrets are things that are accessed through a computer, requiring regular password changes and having firewalls and other electronic ways of separating valuable trade secrets also can be helpful.
If the trade secret information is physical, then physical measures like locks should be used. Employee ID badges, video surveillance, or sign in-sign out sheets can be effective physical means of controlling access to physical items.
Training in Protection
Do you provide training to employees? If so, your trainings should include information on protecting trade secrets, and generally, should state what you consider to be a trade secret (obviously, without explaining the details).
Your company should have a response plan, training employees to handle unauthorized releases of your company trade secrets. Even if you never have to use the plan, just having it will show that you take trade secret protection very seriously.
Trade secret problem or dispute? Reach out to the West Palm Beach commercial litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig for help.
Sources:
wipo.int/en/web/trade-secrets/protection
uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/tradesecretsiptoolkit.pdf
