商业秘密权利主体的认定规则重构

Reconstruction of the Rules for Determining the Right Holders of Trade Secrets

由于商业秘密立法发展迟缓,司法实践多类推知识产权制度填补法律漏洞,但其类推适用基础存在争议,商业秘密权利主体认定即为著例,立法对此未作规定,主流观点类比知识产权制度采创造者说,少数观点基于商业秘密的反不正当竞争定位采控制者说,数字环境下二者对立已不可调和,争议核心在于对商业秘密与知识产权的属性差异认知不同。理论上,与知识产权在全社会产生权利归属、利益排他的法律效果不同,商业秘密系基于对有价值信息占有而产生的受法律保护的事实财产权;从经济学原理出发,知识产权与商业秘密均旨在保护企业对创新成果的产权而纠正市场失灵,前者是以法律之力构建的完整排他性产权,后者是对企业私力构建事实产权的补充性保护。这决定了商业秘密制度不具备信息归属的分配效能,本质上作为一项防御性权利,禁止一切不法私力侵害。故无法类推适用知识产权规则进行漏洞补充,应参照民法占有制度,将商业秘密权利人界定为信息的合法控制者。

Due to the lagging development of trade secrets protection legislation,the Chinese courts usually apply the intellectual property law mutatis mutandis to fill the legal loophole of trade secrets protection,which causes great controversy.The determination of the right holder of trade secrets is the typical embodiment,since the legislation stipulates nothing regarding this issue.The mainstream view finds the creator of trade secrets as the right holder by analogy with intellectual property law,and the minority view favors the controller of trade secrets due to its anti-unfair competition attribute.The conflict between the two views is irreconcilable in the digital environment,and the core of the dispute lies in the different perceptions of the attributes of trade secrets and intellectual property.In legal theories,unlike intellectual property rights,which have the legal effect of benefit attribution and exclusion in the whole society,trade secrets are de facto property protected by law based on the of valuable information.From the economics perspective,both intellectual property and trade secrets protections aim to protect the enterprises'“property”in their innovative achievements to prevent market failures,yet their differences are that intellectual property has established a complete exclusive right by the force of law,while trade secrets just provide supplementary legal protection based on de facto control of the information by the private force of the enterprise.Overall,the protection of trade secrets does not have the legal effect of attribution and distribution of information,but just prohibits all illegal private forces as a defensive right.As a result,the courts should refer to the possession rules in civil law rather than intellectual property law to fill the legal loopholes and recognize the rightful controller of information as the right holder of trade secrets.