According to Article 2 Subparagraph 3 of the Trade Secrets Act “its owner has taken reasonable measures to maintain its secrecy,” which means that the owner of the trade secrets classifies generally unknown information into different access levels depending on his/her manpower and financial situation and then assigns access privileges and rights to the person according to his/her position in a company in consideration of the company’s capability. This method is common in protecting the information with requiring authorized username and security password for computers and limiting access to them where they provide access. (See the Supreme Court decision No. 2013-Tai-Shang-Zi-235). Furthermore, confidentiality agreements are not necessary when determining whether the owner has taken reasonable measures to maintain its secrecy. In other words, it’s enough for trade secret owner to take reasonable measures if the owner exercises efforts, to let people realize his/her intention to keep the information as a trade secret and controls the access to the data instead of readily accessible to everyone. On the other hand, even with confidentiality agreements, if the trade secret information is readily accessible to everyone, the owner of trade secrets has not taken reasonable measures to maintain the information secrecy.

Trade Secret、Reasonable Protective Measures、Confidentiality Agreement