Study Of The Jurisprudence Basis And Application Of Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine

With the rapid growth of Chinese economy, more frequent flows of talents in the market lead to enterprise’s more attention to the trade secret protection after employee leaves his post enterprises. Our Labor Law set the non-compete agreement for it. While,it is actually troublesome to accrue the expected effect in the protection of trade secrets.The U.S. court system has invented a set of remedies in advance for the potential infringement of trade secrets from their legal practice, the so-called “Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine”.During the process when the doctrine developed, there were huge arguments among many state courts about how to apply this doctrine. The doctrine evolved not only through being quoted by different courts in practice, but also from all the theoretical controversy over it.However, its basic connotation and application are so dim. Expressed law still lacks. The legal practice of different state courts, combining with specific case facts and courts’ reasoning, can further clarify the basic characteristics and connotation of the doctrine. In order to explore how to apply the doctrine appropriately.The reference to the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine is just in its infancy outside. With more advanced technology and wider talent flow, it is possible that the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine could be applied to more areas as a solution. Therefore, we can not avoid the research of Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine when we are dealing with the protection of the trade secrets in post-employment.Research Objectives: Probing into the development course of the “Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine”; Making clear the basic theory、standard in application、basic content of “Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine”; Analyzing the problems and difficulties in practice when introducing this doctrine into China; Pointing out if it is appropriate to introduce this doctrine into our future legal system in trade secrets protection and how to apply this doctrine.The first part specializes the introduction of the set-up and development of the doctrine.It is a kind of Relief rule for threatened misappropriation by injunction,which can be seen as relief in advance of business secret. However, this rule is not a kind of legalization, which is actually born in American case law. The article starts from the Harrison case, introducing the Eastman Kodak case, the Dupont case and the Pepsi Co case, to make clear the procedure of its establishment. The article thereafter classifies four sorts of models of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine: 1) the entire application model; 2) the expanded application model; 3) the narrowed application model; 4) and the denial of application model.The second part makes explanation of the basic theory about the doctrine. Threatened misappropriation, which is the primary premise of applying the doctrine, will be introduced in the first quarter. Thereafter the article comes to the most controversial core between inevitable disclosure and threatened misappropriation. It also makes clear the essence of inevitable disclosure so the topic is “Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine” under the threatened misappropriation, which is not confusable “threatened misappropriation theory”. The main body is the standard of application of Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine, whose aim is to clarify the standard itself by analyzing the elements of Inevitable Disclosure cases.In the third part,the article cited the typical cases which were not from the states by choosing the YIDEGE case in Beijing and TSMC case in Taiwan of China. First, the facts are introduced briefly, thereon summarizing the elements of application standards of the doctrine from the results of the judgments. It can be seen that,when applying the doctrine in different scope of law, courts usually misunderstand the essence of the doctrine thereafter they cannot apply it. Enlightenment from the two cases are: first, the doctrine is a kind of relief rule but not a principle of proof; second, the theory and public policy should be considered when applying the doctrine to balance different interests. Experience and lessons can be acquired and detours can be avoided when facing more similar problems by analyzing the two cases.In the fourth part,the article gives main reasons of introducing the doctrine to China by analyzing the status of protecting trade secret. Furthermore, it makes suggestions from the experience of applying the doctrine to different law fields.The conclusion: Although the standard of the doctrine is not written to be unified, while there are considerations on public policy and balance of interests in each cases behind it. There is no assertion about what kind of standard is the best. We can only focus on researching the “Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine”, through making an exploration of the doctrine and paying more attention on its development.Then, we could attempt to importing the doctrine to our current legal system in trade secrets.