Trade secret

Italiano

Trade Secret provides a type of protection that is different from the one granted by trademarks and patents. It focuses on the information related to productive activity or to business organization Such information has the following features:

• It is secret, meaning that it is not commonly known among or easily accessible to workers and experts in the relevant field of activity;
• It has commercial value just because it is secret;
• It is subject to control by authorized personnel, so that the secret can be kept.

Advantages and disadvantages of Trade Secret

Advantages:

• There are no registration costs;
• There is no need to publish an invention or to register it with the UIBM;
• The relevant protection is not limited in time;
• The relevant protection has immediate effects.

Disadvantages:

• If a trade secret refers to an innovative product, the latter con be redesigned by potential competitors and freely used;
• Protection is provided, but only against illegal acquisition, use, or disclosure of secret information;
• Once it is illegally disclosed, a trade secret can be used by anyone;
• The level of protection provided is much lower than the level provided by a patent.

Legislative protection

In Italy, the trade secret is protected by the Industrial Property Code (Codice della Proprietà Industriale). Indeed, art. 98 of the Code enumerates the items to be protected, i.e. company information and industrial/marketing technical expertise, which are usually subject to control by the holder.

Thanks to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), trade secrets have explicitly been included in the field of unfair competition. In accordance with the aforementioned law, the following have to be considered as acts of unfair competition: disclosure to third parties; acquisition or use of secret business information by third parties without the holder’s consent and in violation of the rules of professional correctness; acquisition or use of test data or other secret data whose processing involves considerable effort.