The term “reasonable protective measures” means the owner of the trade secret has willingness of protecting their trade secrets subjectively and maintains active practices to protect the confidentiality of the trade secrets objectively in order to make others realize the information is seen as secrets and should be protected. For example, requiring any employee or third party with access to the confidential information to sign confidentiality agreements, requiring them to maintain the confidentiality of such information, marking “confidential” or “restricted” on the confidential documents, securing the confidential documents with locks, setting password to protect the confidential documents, restricting visitor to get physically close to where the confidential documents are stored, et al. Furthermore, confidentiality agreements are not necessarily required for the reasonable protective measure determination. In other words, it’s enough for the owner of trade secret to take reasonable measures if the owner makes efforts, lets 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. Through the investigation, appellant asserted that the paper of metal ball valve processing had marked “restricted document” (see the above mentioned evidence). This can sufficiently prove the appellant have had willingness of protecting their trade secrets subjectively and make the one with access to the confidential information realize the information had been protected objectively. Furthermore, appellant asserted the data was recorded in the original evidence 16 “the documents of ball valve processing implementation”. However, “the documents of ball valve processing implementation” was not completely provided to the appellee Chang Yi company, and only data that are needed for the specific processing was delivered. After this court reviewed “the documents of ball valve processing implementation” and the data recorded on the paper marked “restricted document”, this court judges that appellant’s assertion is acceptable. In conclusion, appellant should be considered to have taken reasonable measures to maintain the secrecy depending on his/her manpower and financial situation.

Trade Secret、Reasonable Protective Measures