Salliiko liikesalaisuuslaki tiedon hankinnan?
Avainsanat:
liikesalaisuus, immateriaalioikeus, tietoAbstrakti
Does the Trade Secrets Act allow the acquisition of information?
The article examines the unlawful acquisition of a trade secret as stipulated in Section 3, Subsection 4 of the Finnish Trade Secrets Act. The research question is: what does this Section allow when it regulates the unlawful acquisition of a trade secret? The article presents that, against its wording, the provision cannot allow the acquisition of a trade secret but rather the acquisition of information that is the subject of someone else’s trade secret right. In the article, this is demonstrated not only by linguistic interpretation, but also by breaking down the provision to legal positions according to the Hohfeldian schema. As the schema requires that the content of the relation between the positions corresponds, the object in the relation must also remain the same when viewed from different ends of the relation. One conclusion of the article is that the legal concept of trade secret is not coherently applied in the Trade Secrets Act, with the result that the goal of limiting trade secret rights, i.e., ensuring the free movement of information, is not fully achieved.
