The Study On The System Of Trade Secret Protection In The Field Of Labour Law

Trade secrets, as an important part of intellectual property rights, are important intangible assets of enterprises, and are playing a critical role in the market economy. Therefore, most of the companies value highly of business secrets protection and set requirements of keeping company’s trade secrets as a general duty for the recruited employees. According to current China’s Labour legislation and regulations, two methods are employed by the companies to protect business secrets. One is through signing secrecy agreements with employees; and the other one is a restrictive covenant, or in other words a non-competition agreements with the employees. These two methods serve irreplaceable roles in protecting companies ’trade secrets from revealing.This papers focus on analysis of business secrets protection in perspective of Labour Law.Part I elaborates the reasons of selecting the thesis and the meaning of this research, reviews current research on business secrets protection in China and other countries, and proposes the methods of research in this paper.Part Two analyzes the drawbacks of business secrets protection from the perspective of Labour Law. Labour Law, Labour contact Law and judicial interpretations set rules for secrecy agreements and non-competition agreements, but they exist flaws and drawbacks.To be precise, there are two main drawbacks in secrecy agreements,one is the requirements of validity are vague, the other is the burden of proof is unreasonable.As for non-competition agreements,the first problem is that the rules for restriction are too general. The second problem is that whether penalty and compensation can be applied at the same time is not clear. The third problem is whether the new employers should undertake joint liability for damages remains uncertain.Part Three studies the causes of drawbacks of business secrets protection from the perspective of law labour and concludes disadvantageous consequences.The discussion of causes is from the viewpoint of legislative backgrounds and legislative techniques of Labour law, followed by the conclusion that current system of business secrets protection is not sufficient to protect legal interests of companies.Part Four focus on the improvements of business secrets protection. Based on the problems mentioned in above parts, this part proposes feasible suggestions, including improving current legislation and creating of new legislative measures.