Research On The Crime Of Infringing On The Trade Secrets Of Customer List

When I practiced at the law firm,I encountered a criminal case with former employees took their customer resources which violated commercial secrets.In the process of receiving customers and following-up with the case,I gradually have some understanding to the customer list of this particular type of business secrets.Different from technical information,the customers have great autonomy to the choose of the transaction object.The influence of a series of factors,such as the management strategy of the enterprise,makes the customer list has great instability.I also recognize that with the increasing diversification of enterprise information,it is necessary to make a clear definition of the scope and nature of business secrets.Therefore,I choose this topic as the graduation thesis.Shanghai intellectual property court formally inaugurated in late 2014.Different from the existing division of the trial court according to the nature of the case,the establishment of intellectual property court highlights the particularity of such cases—integration of criminal law,civil law and intellectual property law,with more professional.It is more reasonable and the division of the trial court according to the type of case will become the trend of the reform of the judicial organs.Among the various types of intellectual property rights,trade secrets are more closely linked with enterprises and have more diverse forms.The infringement of trade secrets is complicated.I put the emphasis on this particular type of intellectual property crime,which is one of the novelties of this paper.The list of customers is a specific type of trade secrets which was refined in practice,it has wider use and is more vulnerable.In this paper,the research object is limited to the customer list,and a comprehensive discussion is given to the key factors that affect the behavior qualitative,this is another novelty.In the existing research on the crime of infringing trade secrets,the main research direction is to determine the nature and scope of trade secrets,and to understand and calculate the loss,research on customer list takes up a small part of it.In these results,almost all mentioned the commercial secret identified elements of customer list.Although there is a slight difference in the specific expression,the qualitative of the customer list is made within the framework of trade secrets.Some scholars had put forward different rules in the practice of infringing the customer list based on perspective of interests balancing.After reading the existing literature,I find that there has not been a comprehensive study on the application of the law in practice,and the research on the specific behavior patterns is dispersed and single,which leaves writing space for this article.This paper is divided into four parts.The first part begins with the definition of trade secrets in China,and summarizes three attributes of the trade secrets and the characteristics of the customer list if it meets the requirements of trade secret.The second and third parts are about the difficult problems in judging the behavior.From the customer level,as customers have the right to choose the object of the transaction,voluntary choice of customers is often used by defendants as a defense reason in practice.To define the illegality of the case,it will be discussed in two aspects: the general commercial enterprise and the specific occupation.From the staff level,it is inevitably for staffs that the customer information will retain in their memory.Memory effect on such defense should be combined with the memory contents and modes of behavior.The fourth part is about the meaning and calculation of the serious loss.As an important distinction between the general tort and criminal behavior,there is no uniform identification method.Finally,summarize the core elements of infringement of business secret—interests balancing.Customer list often involves the rights of owners,employees and customers,and we should take into account the market and social efficiency as the ultimate goal.