Commercial secret allows you to keep the secret of entrepreneurial success from prying eyes, so the urgency of its protection every day only increases. Excessive awareness of other people's financial achievements can even become a reason for judicial protection and a monetary claim.
What is a trade secret?
The exact definition was jointly developed by businessmen, lawyers and personnel specialists. The need to protect data leaks arises where the work is related to confidential data about making a profit, a secret production or a patented mechanism of work. The owner of a grocery store or a movie theater does not need to protect against the acquaintance of outsiders with ways to get them a profit. It turns out, commercial secret is a concept consisting of:
- A special regime for the protection of working information, allowing its creator to systematically increase revenues and avoid unnecessary costs.
- Introduction and consolidation of internal measures to prevent data leakage.
- The most information that constitutes the secrets of the creation, release and advertising of goods or services, followed by the punishment for disclosure of trade secrets.
- Any other data, documents and developments that make an enterprise or a private entrepreneur unique.
Signs of commercial secrets
The criteria for enrolling in the list of company secrets are the signs that information should possess. They serve to decide whether the data owner has violated the existing law or not. The concept of commercial secrets is characterized by such signs as:
- The value of information is that it should not be known to everyone. For example, fast food chains conceal recipes for sauces and cocktails in order to stand out against competitors.
- Lack of access to it without reaching a special post or obtaining a special permit. It is a well-known fact that not every worker in a regime enterprise knows what his factory produces and where he sells it.
- Information constituting a commercial secret is protected by special measures fixed in the company's charter. Failure to do this item negates the first two signs.
- The data bear an economic benefit for the entrepreneur. Public organizations do not derive income from activities, so they do not know such a problem.
Functions of commercial secrets
Functions are specific objectives for which protection measures are directed. They can differ in different types of business, but the general context still unites them. Functions that disclose a commercial secret are:
- development of criteria for separating valuable information from useless;
- the definition of different categories of intellectual property objects that do not contradict the legislation;
- choice of method of protection;
- Discussion and documentation of information covered by the concept of secrecy;
- setting rules for access to it, as well as compiling a list of eligible persons.
Responsibility for the disclosure of trade secrets
In fact, the company itself decides what to consider a secret, the principles of responsibility for its promulgation are regulated by the laws of the country in which it is registered. For disclosure of a trade secret, the employee responds according to the criminal code. Depending on the country of compilation, he can prescribe as punishment a fine, confiscation of property, restriction of freedom, house arrest or imprisonment.
Commercial secrets and confidential information - the difference
Not any data that I would like to protect from strangers can be called a commercial secret. To differentiate what relates to commercial secrets, and what - to confidential information, civil legislation is capable. Public secrets, the secrecy of correspondence of two persons, personal information, materials of legal proceedings and official secrets may not be public. They are not always associated with revenue: where profits begin, a commercial secret arises.
Trade secrets and ways to protect it
Not every set of protective actions can be called effective in the face of growing number of cybercrimes. This working mechanism, which is based on the protection of trade secrets, includes three elements:
- Organizational measures . They mean the establishment of the fullest possible circle of persons having free access to any data. To do this, each employee of the company undergoes a special check with a conversation with a psychologist.
- Technical measures . Installing anti-spyware and additional hardware on working computers, because of which commercial secret is deprived of the danger of being copied or extracted from the hard disk.
- Legal measures . Notarization of the range of data suitable for inclusion in the number of secrets and the signing of internal by-laws of the company.
Commercial secret as an object of industrial espionage
The more complex the system of protecting entrepreneurial secrets, the more tempting for competitors to have every chance to take possession of it. Industrial espionage is a phenomenon especially popular in the circles of companies with medium and high incomes. For a large businessman, a spy-employee can do serious harm if he makes the provision of information constituting a trade secret to outsiders. Workers who transmit information to third parties are now hired even by the world's intelligence services. They use proven reconnaissance methods:
- joining trust with more knowledgeable colleagues;
- agent work on recruitment and promise of material gain;
- blackmail.