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

Meera Foods holds a customer list that it compiled over years at considerable cost and kept in a password-protected system. A departing manager copies it to a pen drive and uses it at a new employer. Meera also finds that some customers are publicly listed on its website. Which analysis is most accurate?

The compiled customer list can still be protected against misuse because it is confidential, commercially valuable and guarded by reasonable measures, even if a few entries are public. Only the publicly known entries lack protection, so the manager's copying can be restrained.

  1. AThe whole list loses protection because some entries are public
  2. BOnly the publicly known entries are unprotected; the compiled list, being confidential and reasonably guarded, can be protected against misuseCorrect
  3. CThe list is protected only if registered under the Copyright Act
  4. DThe list cannot be protected as customer lists are never confidential

Explanation

Information qualifies for protection when it is secret, has commercial value because of that secrecy and is subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret. A compilation can be protected even if some elements are public. Courts have granted injunctions over compiled customer data, so the 'never confidential' option is wrong.

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