Protecting Your Know-How: The EU Directive On Trade Secrets Of 8 June 2016

Businesses rely on protecting their intellectual property, know-how and trade secrets so that they can bring their innovations to market in fair circumstances and without undue risk. When these secrets fall into the wrong hands, a hard-won market advantage can be damaged or lost. Wolf Theiss experts Partner Georg Kresbach and Senior Associate Maren Jergolla-Wagner analyse here the new Directive and discuss how a trade secret is defined, the kinds of recourse that trade secret holders have to act against unlawful use or disclosure, including judicial redress, and issues concerning transposing the Directive into Austrian law.

The Basics

The Directive (EU) 2016/943 "on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure" was adopted on 8 June 2016 and came into force on 5 July 2016.