Safeguarding trade secrets is essential for maintaining a company’s competitive edge, ensuring financial stability, fostering innovation and maintaining legal protection. They also play a crucial role in strategic positioning, maintaining customer trust, operational efficiency, and employee loyalty. Companies that prioritise the protection of their trade secrets will be better positioned to sustain long-term success in a competitive market.
This course looks at the criteria and principles of managing confidential information, know-how and trade secrets as part of an IP strategy. Trade secrets are a special type of confidential information that need to be managed carefully inside and outside the organisation to ensure your business gets the best commercial benefits from them.
Trade secrets may be commercial or technical in nature and should be treated with the utmost confidentiality to maintain their integrity. A trade secret is an intellectual asset and as such forms a very important part of any IP portfolio. Trade secrets are important to all businesses and may be particularly important for SMEs, start-ups, and early-stage companies.
The course is presented by the expert trainer in three main subject areas:
- Theory and background
- Management of information to secure trade secrets
- Trade secrets in inter-company negotiations
The course includes practical exercises to help embed the learning. There will also be plenty of time for you to ask the expert trainer your questions.
Benefits of attending
By attending this event you will:
- Gain a better understanding of the types of confidential information
- Get to grips with the role of trade secrets in an IP portfolio
- Learn to manage access to information in your organisation
- Understand the basics of the Trade Secrets Directives
- Consider how to use trade secrets for commercial purposes
Certifications:
- CPD: 6 hours for your records
- Certificate of completion
Agenda
Theory and background
- Background and an overview of:
- Current trade secrets laws
- Directives and treaties in Europe and the USA
- How the legislation impacts business practices
- Trade secrets, know-how and patents as part of the IP portfolio
- The importance of timing
- When to disclose information
Practical exercise: How to recognise a trade secret
Management of information to secure trade secrets
- Trade secrets are only of value if they remain a secret
- Points to consider to guard trade secrets in-house:
- Who should have access to trade secrets?
- How to record trade secrets
- Review of tools available to manage trade secrets
- Recording, assessing and managing trade secrets as part of an innovation harvesting process in-house
Practical exercise: How to manage confidential information
Trade secrets in inter-company negotiations
- How to provide access to confidential information to third parties
- The importance of managing contractual agreements for international business discussions
- Should trade secrets ever be disclosed?
Practical exercise: How to manage access to confidential information
Speakers
Ms Jane List,
Consultant ,
Extract Information LimitedJane List has run her own business, Extract Information Limited, providing consultancy, search services, and training, all with a focus on commercial uses of patent information, since January 2013. Prior to this Jane worked on both sides of the information business – commercial information provider side, in content development, product management, commercial strategy and training roles, and in industry in technology consultancy, and science focused organisations where she was responsible for IP matters, scientific, technical and market information. She teaches on commercial searching including patent landscaping and state of the art searching and reporting in the UK and The Netherlands. She has a BSc, MRSC in Chemistry; MSc in Information Science and Cert. in Intellectual Property Law. She has published papers and spoken at global conferences on patent information matters, and is an active member of PATMG, PIUG and BPIP, professional patent information user groups. In July 2014 she became co-Editor in Chief of World Patent Information Journal.
Who Should Attend
This course has been specially designed for all those working in the life-sciences sector, in technical industries, and other commercial innovation enterprises. It will be of particular use to:
- IP managers
- Patent research specialists
- R&D managers
- IP legal professionals
- Patent and trade mark attorneys
- Technology transfer specialists
- CTOs
- Information managers
