Germans are famous for their love of order. But German trade secret law is untidy. Like many EU countries and like the United States, Germany has no national trade secret law per se. Its criminal and civil laws provide for broad trade secret protection — if you know how to navigate them.
A quick primer on Germany’s trade secret laws is available here.
Italy, the country that enlightened the world with the Renaissance, has given us some of the greatest inventors and geniuses in history, from Leonardo da Vinci and Galieo Galilei to Georgio Armani.
But Italy is learning that a great invention is sometimes only as good as the trade secret laws that protect it. Italy is modernizing its trade secret laws to bring them into greater conformity with international standards such as the TRIPS Agreement. A quick primer of Italy’s trade secret laws is available here.
On the same day last week, two rival rubber resin companies issued press releases — each claiming legal victory in the same trade secret dispute.
SI Group, a developer of rubber resins and tackifiers, touted its “significant victory” over Sino Legend before the U.S. International Trade Commission. On the same day, Sino Legend also claimed victory in a parallel Chinese action when the Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court rejected SI’s claims concerning the same dispute.
SI ’s ITC complaint alleged that Sino Legend misappropriated SI’s secret manufacturing processes by poaching one of SI’s Shanghai-based employees, Xu Jie. Xu was allegedly the only person at the plant who had access to the entirety of SI’s secret manufacturing processes. Shortly after Xu’s departure from SI, Sino Legend began producing competing products. SI accused Sino Legend of using SI’s secret processes and of filing patent applications that contained misappropriated Sino Legend information.
Trade secret theft knows no borders in an age of cybertheft and global corporate espionage. But U.S. district courts are often too slow and procedurally ill-equipped to help in cases of international misappropriation, with several recent cases never getting off the ground because of problems serving foreign defendants. Increasingly, victims of foreign misappropriation are turning to the U.S. International Trade Commission — a body armed to hit back at trade secret thieves anywhere in the world.
For companies seeking to remedy the theft of trade secrets by overseas perpetrators, the options have been limited, especially if the thief or the products the thief produces are outside of the United States. Procedural hurdles like obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign company, or the perpetrator’s resident country being inhospitable to claims by an American victim, can thwart an American corporation’s ability to prosecute the foreign theft of its own trade secrets.
An ITC action doesn’t present these obstacles. READ MORE
As President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping prepare for a summit this week in Rancho Mirage, California, the rhetoric over China’s alleged plundering of American government and corporate secrets might lead you to think that the country is lawless when it comes to the theft of trade secrets inside its own borders.
You would be mistaken. China has intricate layers of trade secret laws and government agencies that deal with them. This body of law flows from its statutes, including its 20 year-old “Anti-Unfair Competition Law of China,” its regulations such as its “Certain Provisions on the Prohibition of Misappropriation of Trade Secrets,” and its courts. What China lacks are formal discovery tools and effective remedies for misappropriation.
All of this can make China a complex place in which to operate for a company trying to protect its trade secrets. Start getting up to speed with our primer on China’s trade secret laws, available here.
If your trade secrets get stolen in France, what protections would you have? Most U.S. trade secret lawyers don’t have occasion to consider trade secret laws outside the United States, but there’s a whole world beyond the Uniform Trade Secrets Act! Other countries also recognize the value of trade secrets and have taken steps to protect them.
For the first time in France, the National Assembly adopted a bill aimed at criminal sanctions for trade secret disclosure. This bill, called the “Proposition de loi visant à sanctionner la violation du secret des affaires,” recognizes that the financial value of a company depends more and more on ideas, know-how, and trade secrets that give companies an edge over their competitors. The bill imposes penalties of up to three years’ imprisonment, individual fines of up to €375,000 and corporate fines up to €1.875 million for the disclosure of trade secrets. These penalties aren’t as stiff as the U.S.’s Economic Espionage Act, which was recently amended to increase individual fines up to USD $5 million and corporate fines up to USD $10 million or three times the value of the stolen trade secret to the organization READ MORE
