CHINA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Mitchell Liu (Liu Minxuan), AllBright Law Offices
or legal definition), rather than a more accurate description of the trade secret content. I strongly disapprove of the concept of trade secret points as it leads to a series of problems. Whether made by appraisal institutions, evalua - tion agencies or judicial authorities, judgements are made based on trade secret points, but how are these points defined? There are no relevant legal provisions, leading to more disputes. For example, are trade secret points judged by inde - pendent technical solutions, independent tech - nical effects, independent functions or other cri - teria? Then, forensics evaluation agencies also assess the qualification of trade secrets based on trade secret points with no clear legal basis. To call back to the second contentious point mentioned above, if assessments of damage are based on trade secret points, such approach naturally raises the issue of the value of these points, making it difficult or impossible to con - sider the overall impact. Therefore, I believe the concept of trade secret points is highly prob - lematic; clearer standards for summarisation of trade secrets are urgently needed. Part IV: The “Five-Dimensional Trade Secret Protection System” – From Theory to Implementation in the Context of 42 Originally Created Practice Scenarios Based on my team’s experience in handling trade secret cases, we have found the reason why 90% of corporates lose trade secret law - suits is not due to inadequate laws but rather the lack of systematic protection strategies. This year, there has been an increasing demand for services in implementing corporate trade secret protection systems. In the past, my team, peers in the profession and academia have car - ried out extensive research and studies in this
specialised area. However, conventional imple - menting approaches have generally resulted in a large number of institutional documents that cannot be enforced in daily operation, leaving implementation useless for trade secret protec - tion purposes. Such unenforceable internal rules and regulations cannot help the companies, leaving them struggling with evidence collection for litigation when facing trade secret infringe - ment incidents. After in-depth observation and bottom-to-top analysis of trade secret infringe - ment incidents, my team finally invented a new trade secret protection system framework. Born from our professional experience, this brand- new systematic framework and working meth - odology addresses these pain points and chal - lenges. In the new framework, we divide trade secret protection system implementation into five dimensions: rights confirmation management, rights protection management, access control management, risk management and external disclosure management. This ensures a com - prehensive and holistic design for the system. By using actual work scenarios as starting points and adopting a bottom-up approach, we design and refine operational documents for enterpris - es. Our implementation ensures that each provi - sion is integrated into real-world scenarios and can be applied in practice by every employee. Our successful experience has proved that such implementation eliminated the ineffective - ness of the institutional documents created by conventional approaches. Our proposed five- dimensional trade secret protection system implementation approach assists enterprises in building a full-cycle protection system from pre - vention to response. While we are still polishing each dimension, the whole trade secret protec -
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