Trade secrets do not have a structure like patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Where is trade secret law codified?

Differences/Similarities?

Trade secrets are almost completely state based.

It is also in the Restatement of Torts

There is no place to register a trade secret

It is really any  type of information.

1) Formula

2) Processes

3) Customer list

and many, many more.

It’s really some information, whatever it may be that provides some sort of economic advantage because you have this secret.

So you have to have information + the economic advantage given to you by the information/thing

So the information is protected even though it’s entirely secret.

1) Breach of contract

2) misappropriation

As an employee I would have divulged your trade secret and then after I find out about it, I put it on the internet and tell everyone I know so then the co. can sue me for breach of contract

Missappropriation

Example?

another name?

- theft of the trade secrete so you acquired it by some means that you should not have gotten the secret (ie. Broke into coke’s safe to get the formula) so I have violated trade secret law and am liable for this.

So there’s a case DuPont v. Christopher and DuPont was building a chemical factory and when the factory was built, Christopher rented a plane and took pictures of it to see how they were making chemicals, which were trade secrets.

Aka corporate espionage is another term for misappropriation

when we are trying to establish trade secret law violation, we will look at a variety of factors that a court will take into account

1) Public Availability of the Information- if it’s 100% available (i.e. on the internet), then I’m done ‘cause it’s available, but typically what we’re looking at we’re looking at the relevant public who ware the people that understand this particular industry.

So if I make special rice cripsies, if there are 10 companies that make rice cripsies, and another one figures it out, would this be publically available? Probably not, but if all the company's figure it out then there wouldn’t be any protection for the trade secret but there is no hard and fast rule as to what percentage needs to know to make it “publically available”. The court will look at the situation.

2) Availability of the information in the company- if only one or two people know the information, then probably a secret, but if everyone in the company knows then the court might not think that the info deserves protection

3) Secret (was it kept reasonable safe) so if I locked it away or I only told two employees, this would be reasonable steps to protect the secrecy and as long as you have this, the court will consider that is was kept secret- don’t need fort Knox just take reasonable steps

4) Value of the trade secret- if you make a new rice crispies and everyone hates it and it tastes horrible the court won’t protect it because it’s not really valuable. But if everyone wants to eat it, then it would be valuable.

5) Development Effort- The court will take into account how much effort you took into developing the secret. So if there is a team of scientists laboring for 25 years to make my new rice crispies formula would a lot of effort so court would protect.

6) Acquirability- how easy is it for someone to figure out what your trade secret- If I’m just adding a little sugar to my rice crispies, it’s something that everyone can figure out or easily acquire.

So it is ok for another company to reverse engineer your product because you can figure it out then the aquireability isn’t that high.

Are companies allowed to reverse engineer something that is protected by another company's trade secret?

What factor is related to this?

So it is ok for another company to reverse engineer your product because you can figure it out then the aquireability isn’t that high.

How long can a trade secret last for?

how is this determined?

So as long as you keep it secret, your rights are maintained indefinitely

Method of determining breach of contract and misappropriation?

What do you use?

So if you have a violation of trade secret law it’s really pretty easy to determine if it’s beach of contract or misappropriation (but misappropriation is really the main one that courts go through the factors for but you should still do them in the contract law because if it’s not really a secret then you didn’t really disclose anything

Unsolicitd Disclosures?

How do companies deal with them?

What do they create to deal with this?

A member of the public sends a letter asking the company if they want to know my idea, wouldn’t you like to know. But if the company takes the idea and then start doing it, then the public member will claim that their trade secret was violation

So companies to get around this, will create a “clean room” which basically means that the co. will keep it from the employees and any letters from the public will be screened by legal and if there are any unsolicited disclosures the co. will send back a contract stating that we don’t claim we’re not already doing this, etc. and if you want us to take a look we can, but we don’t make any promises to use your idea and won’t give you any money for it.