Inadequate laws spur proactive stance on trade secrets protection

The protection of trade secrets differs from that of patents and trademarks. At present, China does not have intellectual property laws that specifically protects trade secrets, with provisions for their protection scattered among such laws as the Law Against Unfair Competition, the Labor Law, the Contract Law and the Criminal Law. Among these, the Law Against Unfair Competition is the core law for the protection of trade secrets.

Three criteria of trade secrets

Article 9 of the Law Against Unfair Competition specifies the concept of trade secrets as: “technical information and business information which is non-public, can bring economic benefits to the rights holder and is practical, and for which the rights holder has adopted measures to maintain its confidentiality.” From this it can be seen that a trade secret needs to satisfy three criteria to be accorded the protection of the law:

Secrecy. Pursuant to the Interpretations of the Supreme People’s Court of Several Issues Concerning the Application of the Law in the Trial of Civil Unfair Competition Cases, the term “non-public” means that the “relevant information is not generally known or easily available to relevant persons in the field”.

Wang Yadong is the executive partner and Lu Lei is a lawyer at Run Ming Law Office