商业秘密价值性认定问题探究

Research on the Identification of the Trade Secrets Value

价值性是构成商业秘密的法定要件之一,也是商业秘密保护和维权的前提。然而即使经过数十年的探索和发展,我国司法实践中对商业秘密价值性的认定仍然存在标准模糊,保护范围不够全面等问题。本文结合我国商业秘密立法的发展脉络,对比不同学者的观点,得出竞争优势是商业秘密价值性认定的合理且重要的考量因素的结论,并在此基础上对我国适用竞争优势作为判断标准存在的困境进行分析。同时本文也结合了大量案例,对美国商业秘密价值性的认定方式进行介绍并分析其对我国的借鉴意义,总结出我国司法实践中应当综合竞争优势、潜在价值和投入成本等因素,以更加宏观灵活的方式认定商业秘密的价值性。

Value is one of the legal elements of trade secrets, and is also the premise of trade secret protection and rights defense. However, even after decades of exploration and development, China’s judicial practice on the identification of the value of trade secrets still exists in the standard of ambiguity;the scope of protection is not comprehensive and other issues. This paper combines the development of China’s trade secret legislation, compares the views of different scholars, and concludes that competitive advantage is a reasonable and important consideration for the identification of the value of trade secrets, and analyzes the dilemma of applying competitive advantage as a criterion in China on this basis. This paper also introduces ways to determine the value of trade secrets in the U.S. with a large number of cases, and analyzes their reference significance to China. It concludes that China’s judicial practice should be a combination of competitive advantage, potential value and input costs and other elements, to determine the value of trade secrets in a more macro and flexible way.