Subject areaRules, risk and compliance
A trade secret is confidential business information, such as a formula, a price, a customer list or a process, that has value precisely because it stays confidential.
The law protects it on three conditions: the information is secret, it has economic value because it is secret, and it is protected by reasonable measures (art. 98 of the Italian Industrial Property Code, which implements EU Directive 2016/943). The third condition is the one AI puts to the test: information pasted into an external service without company rules risks losing its protection.
An example
A manufacturer has a confidential price list for its large distributors. If a salesperson uploads it to a free assistant to draft an offer, the company must be able to show which measures it had taken to keep it confidential.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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