15.3.3 Trade Secrets

For this activity:

You will need to write down your answers in your Mahara e-portfolio.

In this theme you have learnt that a trade secret is any formula, pattern, physical device, idea, process, or other information that provides the owner of the information with a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Consider the following tasks. Prepare a paragraph, justifying your comments.

It may help if you use the internet and other sources of information to research your answers. 

Task 1: What qualifies as a trade secret?

Describe the rules for what qualifies as a trade secret in as much detail as possible. You may want to give examples to illustrate your answer.

Task 2: What types of physical measures can a firm take to protect their trade secrets?

To complete this task, you could think about/research the following:

1.     What types of trade secret are there?

2.     How would you hold a trade secret, in what format?

3.     What measures are there for protecting those secrets in their different formats?