(a) the premise of trade secrets is that they are not known to the public, while other intellectual property rights are open, and even patent rights are required to be open to a considerable extent;
(2) Trade secret is a relative right. The exclusiveness of trade secrets is not absolute or exclusive. Other people who have obtained business secrets of the same content by legal means have the same status as the first person. The owner of a trade secret can neither prevent the person who developed and mastered the information before him from using or transferring the information, nor prevent the person who developed and mastered the information after him from using or transferring the information.
(3) It can enable the operators to gain benefits, gain competitive advantages, or have potential commercial benefits.
(4) The term of protection of trade secrets is not legal, it depends on the confidentiality measures of the obligee and the disclosure of secrets by others. A technical secret may last for a long time because of the effective security measures of the right holder and the application value of the technology itself, far exceeding the protection period of the patented technology.
China's "Anti-Unfair Competition Law" stipulates that it is an act of infringing on the trade secrets of others to obtain the trade secrets of the obligee by theft, inducement, coercion or other improper means. However, the law protects citizens and legal persons from obtaining other people's business secrets through legal means.
In judicial practice, it is often difficult to calculate the loss of the right holder of trade secrets, and the court usually takes the profits obtained by the infringer as the basis for judgment. When calculating the profits obtained by the infringer due to infringement during the infringement period, we can neither simply take the sales amount as the profit amount, nor multiply the total price of the products produced by the average profit rate as the profit amount. Generally speaking, it is more appropriate to multiply the sales volume by the average profit rate as the profit amount. The loss of the trade secret owner includes the loss that has been suffered and the inevitable loss, that is, direct loss and indirect loss, while the profit of the infringer is the actual profit, not the expected profit. However, considering the possibility, rather than the inevitability, whether the holder of trade secrets can reach a deal with actual or potential customers, the risks in the transaction always exist. In order to safeguard the interests of all parties fairly, completely and comprehensively, some courts in judicial practice take 1/2 of the infringer's sales multiplied by the average profit rate as the profit amount, which is worth learning.
Legal basis: According to the first paragraph of Article 20 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, if an operator infringes on business secrets and causes damage to the obligee, he shall be liable for damages.