A recent English court decision for the first time explores the overlap between trade secret claims under the EU Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943 and English equitable and common law claims for breach of confidence.
In Trailfinders Limited v Travel Counsellors Limited & Ors [2020] EWHC 591 (IPEC), travel agency Trailfinders brought a case against competitor TCL and four former employees who allegedly exploited customer lists and accessed Trailfinders’ customer database after joining TCL to exploit confidential information to their and TCL’s benefit.
In analyzing whether information taken by employees rose to the level of trade secrets, the judge turned to “the definition of ‘trade secret’ in art.2(1) of Directive 2016/943 (always bearing in mind the broad interpretation of ‘trade secret’ in the Directive).” Trailfinders Limited v Travel Counsellors Limited & Ors [2020] EWHC 591 (IPEC), [29]. Trade secrets under the EU Trade Secrets Directive, implemented in the United Kingdom by Trade Secrets (Enforcement etc.) Regulation 2018, must meet all of the following requirements: “(a) it is secret in the sense that it is not, as a body or in the precise configuration and assembly of its components, generally known among or readily accessible to persons within the circles that normally deal with the kind of information in question; (b) it has commercial value because it is secret; (c) it has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information, to keep it secret.” The judge recognized that there were different categories of information that employees could be exposed to during employment which were entitled to varying levels of protections.
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On June 28, 2019, the Luxembourgish Mémorial published the Law of June 26, 2019 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information better known as trade secrets implementing the EU Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943 after a one year delay. The recent Luxembourgish Law is a literal transposition of the EU Directive and provides a legal definition of “trade secrets,” which was up until now only defined by the courts. The EU Directive defined “trade secret” as information that (i) is secret, i.e. not publicly known or readily accessible to persons normally dealing with this kind of information, (ii) has commercial value because it is and remains a secret, and (iii) has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information, to keep it secret. This definition thus includes any kind of sensitive business information that is kept secret by reasonable measures, such as market studies, business plans, pricing information, etc.
On April 1st, 2019, the Greek Law 4605/2019 implementing the Trade Secrets Directive 2016/943 was published in the Official Gazette. This new law creates a framework for the protection of business information and know-how. Before that date, Greek law did not provide for any legal protection against the expropriation or theft of for example software
On April 16, 2019, the EU Parliament approved a draft directive for new harmonized rules on the protection of whistleblowers. The Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Protection of Persons reporting on Breaches of Union Law (the “Whistleblowing Directive”) creates EU-wide minimum standards to protect persons disclosing information to which