Many businesses have trade secrets that give them a competitive edge, so long as those secrets remain clandestine. While there are some legal protections in place for intellectual property, it’s better if your trade secrets don’t become public knowledge.
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So what are the best strategies for guarding your important trade secrets?
The Best Strategies for Safeguarding Trade Secrets
These are some of the most important strategies for safeguarding your trade secrets:
- Hire a trade secret expert. First, consider hiring a trade secret expert with experience in your specific trade. A trade secret expert can help you figure out what your trade secrets are, figure out your key risks and vulnerabilities, and eventually put together a strategy to make sure your trade secrets remain protected. Trade secret experts can also function as expert witnesses, supporting you if you ever need to take legal action against trade secret infringement.
- Identify all your trade secrets. You won’t have much of a trade secret protection strategy if you don’t even know what your trade secrets are. Obviously, there are a lot of details that make your company unique and allow your products to continue generating revenue. But not every detail in your products or your business qualifies as a trade secret. Being able to distinguish between trade secrets and other types of information is a critical prerequisite for an effective trade secret protection strategy.
- Formally document a trade secret policy. After that, you’ll need to formally document a trade secret policy. How exactly does your company handle trade secrets? How does it control access to them? Who is in charge of making decisions related to trade secrets? If your policy isn’t documented, it might as well not exist, so make it a point to enact these rules and regulations.
- Put someone in charge. Courts will look more favorably on victims of trade secret infringement when those victims have dedicated people in charge of managing trade secrets. That’s because businesses are expected to be proactive and responsible in how they handle their own trade secrets. Appoint a director to take charge of trade secret protections or assemble some kind of board or cabinet to handle these responsibilities.
- Create confidentiality agreements. Each of your employees should be responsible for signing a confidentiality agreement to limit their ability to disclose information to outsiders. Work with a lawyer to make sure your agreements are legally valid and binding. While these agreements won’t prevent all types of leaks, they at least function as a deterrent and enable you to take legal action if an employee is found to have leaked important information.
- Provide thorough employee training and education. Sometimes, trade secrets get out simply due to ignorance. Accordingly, it’s your responsibility to provide thorough employee training and education. Every employee who encounters trade secrets or proprietary information should understand the importance of keeping that information secure.
- Master the arts of physical and digital security. Speaking of security, you need both physical and digital security to keep your modern trade secrets safe. Depending on the nature of your trade secrets, that may mean hiring a security force, using surveillance systems, relying on better software products, enforcing new digital security standards, or some combination of all of these and strategies beyond.
- Control access. Trade secrets are much less vulnerable when they’re known by fewer people. Accordingly, you should control and restrict access to trade secrets as much as possible. Only provide information to the people who truly need it.
- Create plans for supply chains and vendors. Some businesses need vendors and suppliers who know or are exposed to trade secrets. If this applies to you, you need to have a plan for how to manage these risks. For example, how do you vet and onboard your new supply chain partners?
- Investigate infringers. Trade secret infringement can be devastating, especially when you don’t take action on it. Taking action against infringement not only gives you the option to recover damages but also functions as a deterrent to future would-be infringers.
- Keep improving. There’s no such thing as a perfect trade secret management strategy. Even if you have all the fundamentals in place, there are probably still areas of weakness you can improve upon. Focus on continued improvement if you want to keep your trade secrets safer.
Prioritizing Your Trade Secrets
Trade secrets should be one of your top priorities in business, especially if those secrets have the potential to unravel your business or empower your competitors. With a dedicated team of people focused on guarding those secrets, and with formal processes in place, you stand a much better chance of making sure those secrets never get out.
