| Abstract [eng] |
Trade secrets faces new challenges of the 21st century. The increasing risk of economic espionage, longer supply chains, prevalence of outsourcing and labour force migration forces to question the sufficiency of current legal regulation. Even though trade secrets are often used by business to protect confidential information, trade secrets are still considered as an opaque field of law. Dubbed as “Cinderella” of intellectual property, it is still unclear whether trade secrets may be regarded as a traditional object of the intellectual property. TRIPS agreement laid a foundation for a global legal protection of trade secrets. Nonetheless, most of the countries applied the provisions of the agreement in a particular way, therefore the legal protection of trade secrets substantially varies in different countries. European Union institutions acknowledges the importance of the link between the trade secrets and the competitiveness of the whole region, therefore, EU intends to raise the bar of trade secret legal protection throughout every member state. The first chapter of the master thesis analyses the concept and development of trade secrets as well as addressing the complex question whether trade secrets may be deemed as intellectual property. The second chapter analyses the main three conditions for the information to be considered a trade secret – secrecy, commercial value and reasonable steps by the rightful holder of the information to keep it secret. The rest of the chapter analyses national legal regulation of trade secret protection. In order to identify main deficiencies of EU trade secret legal protection fragmentation, third chapter of the master thesis focuses on comparative analysis of different EU jurisdictions. The last chapter of the thesis analyses the provisions of Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2016 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure. Master thesis presents a thorough analysis of Directive’s travaux préparatoires and its provisions. By comparing the forthcoming regulation with the current legal regimes, the author presents the assumptions whether Directive’s provisions will solve the existing legal problems on national and regional scale. |
