On September 9, the Patent and Innovation Committee (PIC) of Quality Brands Protection Committee of China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment (QBPC) held an online seminar on Best Practice on Hot Issues in Civil Judicial Protection of Trade Secrets, and invited lawyer Liu Jun, a partner of King & Wood Mallesons, to give a presentation. PIC Chair Alvin Deng, Vice Chair Simon Xia, Paul Lu, Wang Dazhi, and more than 50 representatives of QBPC member companies attended the meeting.
The seminar was moderated by PIC Vice Chair Frank Liu who pointed out that trade secrets protection had long been a disturbing issue in intellectual property protection. Since trade secrets cases could be relatively complex and the burden of proof on right holder was heavy, there had been a limited number of successful trade secrets cases. This year, he was delighted to see that the trade secrets case nominated by QBPC members company Vertiv Tech Co., Ltd. had been selected as one of the Annual Top Ten Cases of QBPC. The lawyer in charge of the case was Liu Jun.
First of all, Liu introduced the trend of civil judicial protection of trade secrets in terms of legislature and judicial enforcement. As for legislature, he mainly introduced and interpreted the provisions on civil protection of trade secrets in The Civil Code and The Anti Unfair Competition Law. When it came to judicial enforcement, he summarized several judicial trends in recent years, such as the increase in the number of trade secrets cases, the significant increase in the amount of compensation, the increasingly detailed rules for the application of punitive damages, the relative reduction of the burden of proof on right holders, and more involvement by technical investigators in trade secrets cases. When sharing the practice, he took the "Vanillin" case and the " Vertiv " trade secrets protection case as examples. The judgments of these two cases demonstrated the determination of the People's Court to seriously protect trade secrets according to law and severely crack down on malicious infringement.
After that, Liu introduced four hot issues in the judicial practice of trade secrets cases, including the application of the rule on shifting the burden of proof, the elements of punitive damages, the injunction system and the technical investigators system. Regarding shifting the burden of proof, he interpreted the application of the rules in the case of trade secrets in detail. Based on relevant judicial cases, he mainly explained how to apply the rule on shifting the burden of proof, when proving the element of "secrecy" of trade secrets and the infringement conducted by defender. He suggested that right holders should pay attention to the effective use of the rule on shifting the burden of proof in the cases of trade secrets in order to reduce the burden of proof and enhance the success rate of right protection.
Then, Liu made a detailed introduction on the elements of punitive damages. Based on his own experience, in order to push for high punitive damages in trade secrets cases, right holders should actively provide evidence to prove the malice, serious circumstances and actual losses, actively persuade the court to retrieve relevant evidence and order the other party to submit evidence, select the most favorable base calculation method, etc. For the injunction system, Liu went through relevant cases and introduced the main considerations of the court to support the act injunction in trade secrets cases. He suggested that in the case of trade secrets protection, an injunction should be actively applied according to the situation of the case, so as to quickly stop relevant losses. At the same time, attention should be paid to the connection between the injunction and the judgment.
At last, Liu introduced the system of technical investigators in trade secrets cases. He believed that the system of technical investigators was more conducive for the courts to find out the facts, and shorten the duration of litigation, which could help right holders to safeguard their rights quickly. Liu suggested that when there were many technical issues involved in the case, the enterprise could actively communicate with the technical investigator at the technical level. If the technical investigator inquired about some technical questions or requests a written reply after the court session, relevant technical personnel should be required to actively cooperate, respond, and supplement relevant favorable facts as much as possible.
During the discussion and exchange session, Liu responded in detail to the questions raised by the participants.
The civil judicial protection of trade secrets has increasingly become an important topic in patent field, attracting the attention of member companies, academics, courts, lawyers and other groups. In the future, the Patent and Innovation Committee will arrange more relevant activities according to the feedback of members.