Transacting Trade Secrets. Enabling Commercial Transactions of Trade Secrets Utilising Law, Contract and Practical Measures.

Abstract

Trade secrets represent great value in companies and grants competitive advantages. However, they are mainly used internally as a complement to IPRs in order to protect the knowledge of the company. This thesis investigates the possibility to generate value from trade secret by external use, i.e. transacting the trade secret through either selling or licensing. In order to visualise the findings the thesis is built around two different types of cases, one case where the knowledge is embedded inside a physical product and one where the knowledge is openly available in a manual, to give more comprehensive conclusions. Three different types of protection and control mechanisms are analysed, namely Swedish and EU trade secret legislation, contractual protection, and practical protective measures. It is found that each type of protection and control mechanisms does not grant a sufficient level of protection and control by itself. However, by combining the findings from the three parts the conclusion is arrived to that the protection and control should most times be sufficient for externally transacting trade secrets.