About The Effect Of Restraint Of Competition To Protection Of Trade Secret, Let's Talk About "Job-hopping"

As market economy entities, enterprises try to seek for their own interest by competing with other companies. In a mature market economy, the mechanism of competition is well-established and equal to all market entities; therefore trade secret stands out as the magic weapon for entities in the fierce competition. Trade secret is confidential information which is obtained by the enterprises after long-term accumulation and absorption of large amount of money, material and manpower and which is of large commercial value as well as competitive edge to the company. Owning or losing the information may lead to the ups and downs of the company. Trade secrets often present themselves as client information, process flow, design drawing and other forms. And those who have access to these forms of information become essential carriers of trade secrets. In modern commercial society, rapid flow of qualified personnel creates the increasingly serious problem of leaked trade secrets, which explains why restraint of competition acts an important role in protecting trade secrets. For one thing, employers have the basic right of free choice of profession, for another, it's out of question that enterprises have business secret rights. It is an immediate problem as well as the research goal of this thesis to balance the interests of both parties.On account of the protection of trade secret, this article discusses the key role of restraint of competition in protecting trade secrets by a brief analysis of two cases and puts forward a solution.For the first part, it starts with introducing Kaifu Li's job-hopping and Regal(Hastings)Ltd v. Gulliver to analyze the function of restraint of competition.For the second and third parts, it studies the issue of restraint of competition in protecting the trade secret, including the basic theory of restraint of competition, the relation between restraint of competition and trade secret protection, and problems encountered in practice.For the fourth part, by studying the protection system of trade secret in legislation and in practice in different countries and relating them to real problems in China's protection of trade secret, it raises some original thoughts and suggestions.