6.3 Trade Secrets

6.3.1 Confidential Information The law of confidence protects information given or generated in a relationship of trust: business secrets, customer lists, strategies and know-how. The duty arises from the relationship (employee, adviser, confidant) and survives its end. The remedies: injunction, account of profits, return or destruction of the material. 6.3.2 Undisclosed Information TRIPS Article 39 frames the protection: undisclosed information must be protected against unfair commercial use where it is (1) secret in fact, (2) valuable because it is secret, and (3) subject to reasonable secrecy steps. Unlike patents, trade secrets need no registration — but they die on disclosure. 6.3.3 Test Data The pharmaceutical and agrochemical test data get special care: the originator's clinical and field- trial data (years and millions in the making) cannot simply be used by second applicants for their marketing approvals (TRIPS 39.3's "undisclosed test or other data"). The data-exclusivity debate (how long, and for what) is the pharma-access battleground — the generics' world, where the compulsory-licence and competition interfaces of U2.4 meet the public-health case.