Confidential Information and Trade Secrecy Looking for Harmonization in the Innovation Union – Florence

RSCAS Seminar Series

by Valeria Falce

Wednesday 24 June 2015 at 16.30 Seminar Room, Villa Malafrasca

Via Boccaccio, 151

The impulse towards the harmonization of confidential information and trade secret protection at EC level falls within a broader and comprehensive strategy aimed at ensuring that the Single Market for intellectual property functions smoothly. In such perspective, the recent Proposal for a Directive on trade secrecy, complemented by the compromise draft of the Council Presidency, is welcome in so far as it invokes the unfair competition paradigm as the EC model to follow in order to balance the request to secure confidential information and trade secrecy with the need to leave free third parties that have not obtained the same information by illegitimate means to develop and freely use it. However, as far as the harmonization process regime is concerned, there is still room for further analysis. While the Commission does not clearly identify the harmonization strategy to endorse, the European Council openly supports a minimum standard harmonization. Indeed the latter option, already shared at International level, has proven to be inadequate to create a level playing field where trade secrets owners can rely on equivalent rules, obligations and guarantees. The above failure suggests to deviate from the minimum harmonisation technique embraced by the Council Presidency with the view to replace the current patchy system with a unified regime where the level of protection is equivalent. Time seems ripe, in conclusion, to sponsor a fully harmonized environment governing the EC know-how policy, appearing such solution the most suitable both to incentivize inter- and intra- sectorial cooperation as well as international spin-off/start-up activities and to substantially contribute to the Innovation Union. Valeria Falce, Professor of Law at the European University of Rome, was a Visiting Fellow at FSR Communications & Media at the Schuman Centre this year. She is Scientific Coordinator of the Advanced Course on Corporate Governance and gender neutrality, European University of Rome and Co-Director of both CREDA (Center Research Excellence Copyright Law, European University of Rome) and CESDA (Center for the Study of Insurance Law and Financial Market, European University of Rome) and has been an Advisor for (DG Internal Market) Study on trade secrets and confidential business information in the internal market. Her latest publication is Intellectual Property in Italy, International Encyclopaedia of Law, Kluwer, 2014. Chair: Philipp Genschel Link to the calendar of the RSCAS Seminar Series