‘To keep your secret is wisdom; to expect others to keep it is folly.’1 Trade secrets play a decisive role when protecting ‘business relevant’ information (eg ‘methods, processes, customer lists, blueprints, etc.’2). Despite the law of trade secrets often being stigmatized as the ‘stepchild’2 of IP law, the importance of this legal discipline is on the rise for various reasons. First, the emergence of the internet of things allows companies to have various processes and the respective equipment linked to each other. Not only does this create a significant amount of (new) data but also makes confidential information more vulnerable to breaches at each stage of the intertwined process. Secondly, as evidenced by the NSA scandal in Germany,4 technical progress opens the gate for theft of confidential information. Thirdly, in an economy that finds itself in a steadily increasing globalized context, fragmented legislation can stifle cross-border activities between innovative businesses. Hence, the aim of harmonising laws in order to diminish legal barriers set by fragmented legislation has become more important to the economy than ever.
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Farkas et al. (2016) studied this question.