Yunya’s Trade Secret Case was Elected as Typical Intellectual Property Case by Wuxi Court

 

Jiangsu See-Sun New Material Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter See-Sun) is mainly engaged in the research, production, sales and export business of PVC flooring, and establishes and maintains its foreign trade customer base through participating in foreign exhibitions and long-term operation. It keeps the list of its foreign customers strictly confidential, and also takes confidentiality measures to protect its list of customers in daily management. Two employees from the foreign trade department, sent a statement to the overseas customers of See-Sun, falsely claiming that a newly established trading company owned by See-Sun is engaged in selling the products of See-Sun. They promoted several orders between the trading company and the seven overseas customers of See-Sun and collected payments from the overseas customers, causing enormous economic losses for See-Sun. Yunya sued the two employees and the trading company for infringement of trade secret on behalf of See-Sun.

 

The court upheld Yunya’s claim that the customer information of See-Sun’s seven overseas customers shall be identified as trade secret. The customer information including contact person, contact number, e-mail address, product model, trading conditions of the overseas customers reflect the unique trading habits of customers, and See-Sun also took measures by signing confidentiality agreement and setting information access authority to protect the above customer information. The employees claim that the customer information involved in the case can be obtained from the relevant network information query system, which belongs to public information. Yunya argued that the information query system is formed by collecting and sorting out the data published by the customs of various countries, and they are only accessible to paid-readers, which means the amount of customer information is directly linked to the amount of money paid to obtain. The court supported Yunya’s argument and decided that the two employees and the trading company shall stop the infringement and compensate See-Sun for the loss of RMB 300,000.

 

The identification of trade secret relating to the customer information is considered as one of the most difficult legal issue in the trade secret cases. The court accurately identified the customer information as trade secret instead of information in public domain based on the fact that the customer information is not freely available to the public and inquiry system is closed and paid. The distinction between public information and non-public information is of guiding significance for such trade secret cases. The judgment of this case provides powerful guidance for enterprises to better protect business information, and effectively standardizes the competition order of market economy.

 

Yunya Lawyers won this case both in the first trial in Wuxi Intermediate People's Court and the final trial in Jiangsu Higher People's Court. Also, the two employees and the trading company were penalized for infringement by the Market Supervision and Administration Bureau of Liangxi District, Wuxi under the administrative reporting by Yunya. The business interest and reputation of See-Sun has been maximized protected by Yunya Lawyers.

 

Yunya has a high-quality lawyer team and rich experience in intellectual property fields. Several intellectual property cases represented by Yunya Lawyers have been selected into the typical cases issued by Supreme People's Court, Jiangsu Higher People's Court and Wuxi Intermediate People's Court. Yunya has the ability to investigate and claim for infringement of intellectual property rights such as patent, trademark, copyright, integrated circuit layout design, trade secret (know-how), etc. to provide our client with all-round professional legal services.