16 May 2019
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Trade Secret Protection in India- Presentation
[slideshare id=55158150&doc=21856845-trade-secret-protection-in-india-151116125656-lva1-app6891]...
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Trade Secrets
17 February 2019
Trade Secret Violation – A Hypothetical Indian Case Scenario
This post was last published on January 23rd, 2012. India has emerged as one of the important markets for information technology services and services involving business processes. With the constant development of industries in India, the growth of intellectual property has been exponential and so with it, the increasing need for providing better enforcement techniques to protect IP. India already has various statutes for the protection of patents, trademarks, copyrights, designs etc. But existing and rising industries/businesses are generating a lot of information which is confidential in nature and processes as well as technical know-how which qualify as trade secrets and...
Continue reading 15 February 2019
Reasonable Measures for Secrecy
This post was first published on July 4, 2011. One of the basic and most important requirements for protection of trade secrets is reasonable measures. Despite its value, information would not be considered to be a trade secret unless reasonable measures are taken to protect its secrecy. A measure is considered to be reasonable if it gives notice of the existence of a secret and mandates or imposes its non-disclosure. While the stringency of a measure would provide a strong basis to prove existence of a trade secret, measures need not be very stringent or unbreakable. Some measures that have been considered...
Continue reading 04 February 2019
Trade Secrets and Patents – A Pharmaceutical Perspective by Ms. Vinita Radhakrishnan
This talk on Trade Secrets and Patents was delivered by Ms. Vinita Radhakrishnan at the IIPLA 5th IP Conference held at the Carlton Palace Hotel, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). You may view the full presentation below. [slideshare id=130475180&doc=iiplapresentation-190204133117] Topics Covered in the presentation include: 1. The shift from traditional medicine to modern medicine 2. Making a choice between patents and trade secrets 3. Pros and Cons of Trade Secrets and Patents 4. IP Protection Models 5. Invention based IP strategy 6. Industry based IP strategy 7. Industry Trends 8. Top 10 pharma companies and their patenting trends 9. Patent trends (decrease in patents filed) 10. Number of patent applications filed by pharma...
Continue reading 24 December 2018
Validity of Non-Compete Covenants in India
First Publication Date: 15th December 2010 Agreements that restrain an employee from working with a competitor or carrying out a competing business are called Non-compete agreements. Such agreements, when reasonable are considered to be valid in countries such as USA and UK. However, under the Indian law Non-compete agreements are valid to a very limited extent because agreements in restraint of trade or employment are void under Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act. The section reads as follows:"27. Agreement in restraint of trade void .– Every agreement by which any one is restrained from exercising a lawful profession, trade or...
Continue reading 22 December 2018
Integrating Secrecy and Exclusivity to Gain Competitive Advantage
First Publication Date: 10th December 2010 Patents protect inventions by granting exclusive rights for a period of twenty years and trade secrets protect any information having business value as long as the information can be maintained secret. Unlike patents, trade secrets need not be registered and will remain valid based on measures taken by the trade secret holder. The subject matter of trade secrets is very broad and a very small portion of that subject matter relating to inventions overlaps with that of patents. What protection should a company opt for with respect to the overlapping subject matter? As propounded by the...
Continue reading 18 December 2018
Secrecy Obligations of Employees
First Publication Date: 7th December 2010 Trade Secrets form an important part of intellectual property owned by most knowledge driven companies. Infact, patents and others are just the tip of the intellectual property ice berg of a company, the rest being trade secrets. Most countries including India do not have legislations protecting trade secrets and the law with respect to their protection emanates from court decisions. Agreements have been recognized by Indian courts to be valid measures to protect secrets. Some of the decisions have been provided hereunder for your reference. Niranjan Shankar Golikari v. The Century Spinning and Mfg. Co. Ltd[i] Mr. Niranjan...
Continue reading 27 October 2018
Trade Secret Case Law Jurisprudence in India- 1
First Publication Date: 21st December 2009 Trade Secret in India is not protected under any specific law but Indian Courts from time to time have recognized that confidential business information, such as customer lists, details of suppliers, pricing policies, product launch time-schedules, management marketing, know-how, designs, drawings, model, specifications, surface data, notes, improvements, technical information and so on may qualify as trade secrets. The jurisprudence that has developed in relation to trade secrets and confidential information is by way of case laws. In light of this, following and successive posts will be devoted in bringing out the case law jurisprudence relating to...
Continue reading 15 October 2018
Trade Secrets Basics
First Publication Date: 4th February 2008 What is a trade secret? Trade secret is any information that has independent economic value because of not being known to others and for which reasonable measures have been taken to protect it as a secret. A secret is a trade secret only if it has legal sanctity. Terms like 'confidential information', 'proprietary information', 'undisclosed information' and trade secret have the same meaning from legal perspective. What is a reasonable measure? A measure to protect secrecy of information is considered to be reasonable, if it gives notice about the secret nature of the information and has legal sanctity....
Continue reading 27 December 2017
Data Protection in India- Part II
We live in a complex web of social relationships, which are influenced by several factors that are alien to any other country. The extent to which one wishes to be left alone depends on the nature of relationships in the web, which are sometimes more divergent than one can imagine. The privacy world of an individual in her relational web is multi-dimensional, dynamic and contextual, and suffers from predictability ambiguities. The challenge of defining the nature, scope, and extent of privacy through simple semantics is therefore very challenging, if not impossible. To put it in patent language, privacy is one...
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