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CS Professional · Intellectual Property Rights - Law and Practice · Protection of Trade Secrets

Arjun Foods Ltd keeps its customer price list on a shared drive open to all staff, without any confidentiality marking, NDA or access control, and has also shared it casually with outside distributors. When it later sues an ex-employee for misuse, which weakness is most likely to defeat its claim?

The claim is most likely to fail because Arjun took no reasonable steps to keep the list secret. Protection needs information with the quality of confidence, and open access without markings, NDAs or controls suggests it was not treated as confidential.

  1. AThe list was not registered with the Registrar of Trademarks
  2. BThe list was not first filed as a patent application
  3. CThe information lacks the necessary quality of confidence because Arjun took no reasonable steps to keep it secretCorrect
  4. DThe ex-employee did not pay any royalty for it

Explanation

Courts require that the information be confidential, not public knowledge, and that reasonable steps be taken to keep it secret. Open access and casual disclosure to outsiders undermine this. Registration is irrelevant, since trade secrets are not registered.

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