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On 2010-06-25, Arved Sandstrom <> wrote:
>
> I think that if employees sign good NDAs and non-competes that if those
> employees then disclose the source code for something on a website that
> this doesn't by itself void the trade secret...provided that other
> measures to protect the secret are in place. That is, if you were not
> shredding confidential paperwork and just left it lying around on desks,
> there was no kind of policy concerning removal of paperwork or flash
> drives from the premises, you had no decent escorted visitor access, and
> your offices were routinely cleaned by custodians who were not vetted,
> that disgruntled employee could go ahead and post all the source for
> your latest in-house app - which has some trade secrets on it - and it
> would possibly be legal for competitors to use that knowledge.

It's difficult to say very much specific about trade secrets because
they are handled very differently in different jurisdictions. In
general, however, if a company can document that they have good
mechanisms in place for keeping a trade secret secret then this will
tend to count in their favour when determining whether the secret has
legally become public.

Conversely, if a company calls something a trade secret but then does
little or nothing to actually protect it their secret will tend to
lose legal trade secret status very fast.

Cheers,
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
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