What should I do if an employee takes away company confidential information? Relevant provisions of the Trade Secrets Act.

Employees keep the company's confidential information privately or even provide it to competitors, or take the company's secrets with them when they leave, set up a new company on their own, or join a rival camp. How should the company protect its rights and interests?

[# Lawyer Li Yusheng’s legal knowledge]
Company information, whether paper, physical, or digital, as long as it meets the business secrets defined by the Trade Secrets Act, is classified as confidential information and is protected by the Trade Secrets Act.

▪Article 2 of the Trade Secrets Act
The so-called trade secrets refer to methods, technologies, processes, formulas, programs, designs or other information that can be used for production, sales or operations and meet the following requirements:
☑ Not known to those generally involved in this type of information.
☑ Those that have actual or potential economic value due to their confidentiality.
☑ The owner has taken reasonable confidentiality measures
What is often controversial in practice is whether the company has taken reasonable confidentiality measures to ensure the company's business secrets.
▪It is recommended that companies should pay attention to:
☑Sign appropriate confidentiality agreements with employees
☑Suggestions on company internal rules and confidentiality clauses
☑Regularly promote the importance of protecting confidential information
☑If employees want to resign, they need to be informed of their confidentiality obligations again
☑Keep digital confidential information in an appropriate manner
(For example, adding a password to the cloud database or restricting access to employees of specific departments, etc. If it is paper data, it must be kept in an appropriate manner)

▪What can you do if business secrets are leaked?
Based on the actual situation, the person who leaked the secret can be charged with # criminal obstruction of secrets, etc., and whether to carry out # legal actions such as civil claims or even # false seizure.

Since once business secrets are leaked, it will be more difficult to deal with the aftermath, so it is recommended to discuss and evaluate response strategies with professional legal professionals immediately.

Further reading:What are business secrets? Three major legal requirements for business secrets.
Further reading:What should I do if a trademark infringement occurs? Legal measures that can be taken.
Further reading:What is patent litigation? What is the process of patent litigation??

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