13 Chinese Court Judgments Included in WIPO's Recently Launched Trade Secrets Case Law Collection

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently launched "WIPO Lex Trade Secrets Case Law Collection", an online resource complementing the broader WIPO Lex-Judgments database with a focus on trade secret-related judicial decisions. The introduction of this collection to the database emphasises that among various types of intellectual property, trade secrets have become a key area for protecting valuable information and competitive advantage.

This collection, jointly created by the WIPO Patent and Technology Law Division and the WIPO Judicial Institute, currently contains 66 judgments from 9 countries: 13 each from China and the US, 12 from India, 11 from Germany, 5 from South Korea, 5 from Italy, 4 from Brazil, 2 from the UK, and 1 from Tanzania.

The 13 Chinese judgments stem from a number of representative trade secret cases adjudicated by the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), as well as local courts including Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court and Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. These cases cover a broad range of sectors such as biopharmaceuticals, chemical materials, automotive technology, online gaming, and intelligent algorithms.

The judicial decisions included in the collection address many of the core questions in trade secret law, including "what qualifies as a trade secret", "how trade secret protection is established", "when disclosure or misappropriation occurs", "lawful exceptions to trade secrets", and "remedies for breach of trade secrets".