Confidentiality and protective measures
Protection can concern technical or commercial information. WIPO identifies value arising from secrecy, limited availability and reasonable protective measures as general conditions, rather than merely attaching an internal label.
Processes, formulas, source code and customer or supplier information can qualify. A confidential combination of individually public elements may also have commercial value requiring its own assessment.
References: [1]
Misappropriation and its limits
Protection addresses acquisition, use or disclosure contrary to honest commercial practices, including espionage and breaches of confidence. Legal systems provide remedies through differing statutory or other rules.
It does not create an absolute prohibition on others reaching the same information. Independent development and acquisition through means such as permitted reverse engineering differ from stealing confidential information.
References: [1]
Secrecy and published inventions
Patent applications generally require technical disclosure, whereas trade secrecy depends on limiting access. The approaches pose different questions about confidentiality, eligibility and the protection sought.
Confidentiality agreements and access controls can support secrecy. Their effects depend on the applicable rules and facts: absence of a patent does not automatically make information a trade secret, and secrecy does not itself confer a patent’s exclusionary scope.