The Language of Intellectual Property Law: Trade Secrets

Transcript

hello everyone and welcome back this is our last video on intellectual property law and now we are going to be talking about Trade Secrets and how they relate to the other things we've talked about things like patent copyright or or trademark uh trade secrets are are the kind of the fourth intellectual property and they're not discussed as much as others largely because they're very secretive they're not the kinds of things that companies want to discuss that's just the way it is but before we go on I have one last chance to tell you all about myself my name is Jeff Kaiser I'm a lawyer I'm a legal English teacher I'm a traveler I love cultures and I love language and I'm I'm I will talk to you for hours about it if we're ever in the in the same room um I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for spending these these hours with me and and letting me talk about intellectual property law it's it's an area of law that I find fascinating and that I don't get to work in enough it's it's a really good fun part of the law and and it's it's the kind of thing that that we all need to think about especially with the technology of today making it so easy to steal copyright copy written material it's it's one of those factors in life and not just in your profession but in your life so so thank you so much for spending this time with me and I've really enjoyed it and I hope that we get the chance to do it again so Trade Secrets there's no way to register a trade secret like there is with a trademark or a patent or a copyright these are secrets that have been developed by a company um to qualify as a trade secret the information must be commercially valuable be a secret only known only known by a few people and be subject to steps taken to protect it this might mean confidential confidentiality agreements or non-disclosure agreements but generally they we want to keep the the number of people that know about this as low as possible otherwise it's not a very good secret is it now if somebody let's say hacks in to a company and steals their Trade Secrets that is a violation of their intellectual property rights sure it's not a patent no it's not a copyright or a trademark but it's still a work of authorship that deserves our protection infringement often is based in unfair Trade Practices or or other more commercial law because there isn't a lot of law about Trade Secrets the legal protection of Trade Secrets is based in unfair competition it's based on having somebody steal your secrets from you and and I think we all agree that every business has their their secrets they their way of doing things and just because it's a secret doesn't mean that it's a bad thing at least to me so these are heavily fact dependent situations whether there was a violation or an infringement depends on each case in each very specific situation more often than not um when when a trade secret is exposed it ends up being a breach of contract situation because there are ndas or non-disclosure agreements or or other or confidentiality agreements that's usually how the how the legal system works its way into a trade secret situation now this is the this is the trick is that a third party can absolutely use the information within a trade secret so long as they didn't steal it so hypothetically speaking I've mentioned this earlier that Coca-Cola is a trade secret and it's locked away in the vaults of Coca-Cola if someone can figure it out without hacking into their computers or or having some Mission Impossible style uh thievery there's nothing wrong with it if I could figure out the secret formula to Coca-Cola I could I could make my own Cola drink and say it tastes as good as Coca-Cola and people would probably not agree because of psychology but but I could have the exact same product on the market there's no violation there is nothing wrong with that as long as I were to arrive at that secret on an independent basis there is no registration there is no formalities you can lock away a trade secret about what you say on the telephone um it it it's there's no term it lasts forever and until somehow that Secret Gets Out if it escapes somehow it can be hidden forever so but to be become a trade secret you have to comply with a few requirements most countries in consider Trade Secrets part of different areas of law it's not intellectual property law as much as it is criminal law administrative law commercial or civil law it's it's based in unfair competition rules generally speaking and in general depending on your jurisdiction the owner of the trade secret can collect damages from the person who violated it um like I said this is a very complex and it goes into very different areas of law but it's possible that even criminal penalties May apply the real difference between trade secrets and patents is that patents require disclosure to have a registered patent you must disclose your invention to the world and patents are also Limited in time as well they only last 20 years generally speaking again based on U.S law it might be different Where You Are but Trade Secrets can remain secret forever foreign like I said it's hard to imagine that something so valuable has not been registered or licensed or or agreed to or or protected in some way their biggest protection is is I assume a big safe in their headquarters in Atlanta Georgia but what if somebody broke in I can't imagine the value of that of that formula Lord knows Pepsi would sure want want it and others as well and it's always just been a trade secret so it's it's a smaller area of intellectual property law but it's still very much something to consider just because of the secretive nature of it and well that brings us to the end of our video series the general rules here are are absolutely the most basic concepts when it comes to intellectual property law patents protect the functionality and design of an invention trademarks protect the brand copyrights protect the artwork and Trade Secrets protect the information I hope that that makes sense to you I hope you've enjoyed these videos very much I've really enjoyed making them and I've really enjoyed being able to go through all of this with you I'd like to just take this one last opportunity to say thank you it means a lot that you've chosen our company to to learn legal English with and I look forward to giving you more content like this in the future have a fantastic day week month and year and until I see you again have a great day bye-bye