Misappropriation Of Trade Secrets

The term trade secret refers to a piece of secret information which confers a competitive advantage on its owner by virtue of not being known to its competitors. It is imperative for the owner to exert reasonable efforts to maintain the secrecy of the information, else it ceases to be a trade secret. A trade secret has three distinct characters. Firstly, it is a secret; secondly, it provides a competitive advantage to its owner on its competing rivals; thirdly, it is subject to sound efforts to maintain secrecy. Hence, if you publish a company’s trade secrets, then the company can file a legal claim against you for trade secret misappropriation. When a person acquires a trade secret improperly through theft, bribery, breach of confidentiality agreement, and publishes it knowingly then he/she has misappropriated the “Trade Secret”. Majority of the US states have adopted their own version of UTSA (Uniform Trade Secret Act). Therefore, there is a good deal of uniformity among state laws on misappropriation of trade secrets.