The law firm Cheongchul's Attorney Eom Sang-yoon conducted an interview with 'Beyond Post' regarding 'trade secrets under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act'.
Recently, there has been increasing interest in the protection of corporate trade secrets.
However, not all trade secrets of a company are protected by the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, so it is important for companies to clearly understand the requirements to protect their trade secrets.
To qualify as a trade secret under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, three conditions must be met.
▲It must not be publicly known (non-publicity)
▲It must have independent economic value in terms of technology or management (economic usefulness)
▲It must be maintained as a secret (secret management) .
To be recognized for secret management, it is necessary that
⑴ employees must be aware of the existence of the trade secret,
⑵ a 'trade secret management policy' must be established and documented,
⑶ when storing trade secrets, they must be spatially separated, and access to them must be limited.
⑷ Additionally, when hiring employees, it is necessary to impose confidentiality obligations in their employment contracts and to sign a non-compete agreement for the protection of trade secrets upon resignation.
Moreover, just because a trade secret protection pledge is obtained does not automatically guarantee recognition of secret management; various technical and physical measures must be taken in conjunction, and experts may need to be consulted in similar situations.
Attorney Eom Sang-yoon of the law firm Cheongchul stated in an interview, “For a company to have its held information recognized as a trade secret, it must engage in acts to manage that information confidentially, and it needs to raise the level of that management as much as possible relative to the size of the company. If a company does not have any management system for its information, it may face adverse situations as it will not be protected under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act. Therefore, the protection of trade secrets is a very important issue directly related to a company's competitiveness, and it is necessary to seek help from professionals.”
More details can be found in the published full text of the interview.
