Protecting Trade Secrets Through Intellectual Property Rights

Loss of data from documents can greatly hamper the competitive edge of research agencies and manufacturing organisations. For small and medium-sized businesses that are market leaders within their own segment, there is a specific necessity to cooperate with other companies; for example academic institutions or business associates, in order to maintain competitiveness and innovation. At the same time, there is also a need to safeguard their intellectual property rights. These include registered trademarks, brands, licenses, privileges, certificates, samples and exclusive rights. Within this scenario, it is also required of them to protect their trade secrets, for example, manufacturing or assembly procedures and compositions or formulae, which do not fall under legal protection rights in the manner that intellectual property does. Yet, classified trade secrets can play a substantial impact on the organisation’s competitive edge if they are misplaced or get into the wrong hands.


Protecting Trade Secrets Through Intellectual Property Rights

Across the European Union, knowledge-based data is progressively becoming significant. More than 40% of gross domestic product is generated by organisations centred on intellectual property, which shows that the ratio of business from protection-concentrated industries is correspondingly elevated. According to a study conducted in the European Union, knowledge-based activities made up approximately 30% of European jobs. Additionally, standard wages in these organisations were more than 38% higher than in other fields. They include organisations that are intensively focused on brand rights, design security, registered trademarks and copyrights. For example, pharmaceutical product formulations, research papers, authored books, production of mechanical parts etc.

In most cases, patents that have been granted for technological innovations are usually licensed for a maximum of 20 years. Some nations offer patent protection in the form of a utility standard, a sort of “micro-patent” that is licensed only for a short period of time. For example, in Germany, utility standard protection is only awarded for an innovation that is based on what is regarded as ingenious step in Europe and non-obvious invention in the United States. In most countries in the European Union, the utility standard is granted dependent on the precise function–the novelty and creative process are not taken into account.

Intellectual property rights are automatically applied to artistic creations or intellectual works. Some popular examples of these include scientific research and papers, original software, photographs and sometimes even the ingredients that go into a perfume. In this scenario, copyright protection is valid throughout the lifetime of the innovator or creator of the work product and–in most nations–up to 70 years post his or her demise.

Unfortunately, most European Union nations do not have legal laws and policies to safeguard trade secrets. Trade secrets that fall under the ambit of protection include customer databases, manufacturing or assembly procedures, formulations, research material in scientific papers. Most industries highly value acquisition plans and negotiating positions that are also considered sensitive pieces of data which must be kept under discretion.

Some cases involving violation of trade secrets award the victims claim damages. But many organizations are reluctant to approach legal help when trade secrets are infringed, as they fear that the privacy of their trade information will not be respected in the court of law. In spite of this, a study conducted by the European commission revealed that one in six companies have become a casualty of attempted trade secret pilfering, at least once in the previous eight years.

The biggest valuable asset that any organisation owns is its internal data. If this information gets into the wrong hands or is irresponsibly misplaced, it could bring about colossal damage to the organisation. Crucial details of development work and research can be leaked out to competition, while financial data could expose the stability of the company. In addition, future plans such as acquisition details and specific developments could fall under threat if competitors get their hands on the classified information.

The German economy alone suffers a huge loss of over € 4 billion every year due to unnecessary data leakages. This was revealed by a study conducted of over 500 German establishments in the year 2012, by Corporate Trust, which is a management consulting firm. Further studies conducted in 2013 by KPMG revealed that over 450 German organisations lost more than one million euros per case, when internal information was leaked. More than a quarter of the loss had been due to the costs spent on investigating and ensuing costs, which averaged out to approximately € 120,000.

Although intellectual property rights are partly protected with the help of judiciary assistance, they need to be further corroborated by technical measures.

The flow of data that is so critical to establishments should not be barricaded or tampered with, in the path towards providing protection of the data. Some of the following functions and precautions that can help in meeting the dual necessities of seamless collaboration and document security along with information protection are as follows:

  • The collective platform should be self-descriptive, for example it should be intuitive enough for workers to comprehend how the platform can work on its own; the platform should also be able to support users in their day-to-day activities and should be looked at as a constructive tool rather than a handicap, in addition, based on the requirements of the users, the user Interface design should also be specifically customised.
  • The functionality of the collaborative platform should be equal to the normal working environment of the workers on their workstation, smart phone, PC or laptop.
  • Mobile access should be enabled on the platform for travelling workers or users who are working from their home office.
  • Transmission of information and storage must be safeguarded with the help of cryptographic methods. With the help of robust authentication, only authorised workers can have permission to read or modify documents. In addition, access permissions should optionally be for a fixed period of time and should be easy enough to alter from time to time.
  • The platform should be able to look into what users are doing with the document while having the ability to restrict their document behaviour. For example, the document could be in a read-only state with no authorisation to save, print, or forward the contents of the document.
  • With the help of a tamperproof audit trail, activities on the collaborative platform should be monitored and traced while providing a simple insight into how such documents are edited or used by the worker. The organisation should be able to obtain responses on how thoroughly specific documents have been utilised.
  • Robust encryption must ensure that unauthorised individuals are prevented from eavesdropping on communications and illegally obtaining or maliciously altering data.
  • Sensitive and classified data must be safeguarded by technical staff from within the organisation.
  • Document security policies and guidelines must be incorporated into the system in such a manner that information is available only for a particular objective, to specific individuals and for a determined period of time only.
  • The security features of the platform must be regularly updated and based on the latest technology. This is critical given the developing security vulnerabilities that emerge almost every day.

Organisations across the world must learn to collaborate with technical third parties in order to remain competitive and innovative. With the help of cloud-based collaboration platforms, innovativeness can be facilitated while business processes can be effectively supported. Simultaneously, organisations must also safeguard their intellectual property and trade secrets efficiently.

Follow Me