In business life, the protection of trade secrets is of great importance. Frequent constellations are when management or leading employees leave a company to join a competitor or to found a competing company themselves. The accusation is quickly formulated that in such a context trade secrets and secret know-how have changed sides.
bock legal has many years of experience in this area from numerous contentious disputes that are regularly brought before the courts, even in times when trade secrets were still primarily protected by provisions of the German Unfair Competition Act (UWG). Since April 2019, the specially created Act on the Protection of Trade Secrets (GeschGehG) has been in force in implementation of a corresponding EU Directive. bock legal has been involved in the development of this Act from the beginning which is currently gaining further contours through case law. What is also new is that the law requires active secrecy measures from the entrepreneur in order to benefit from the protection, which was not a prerequisite for the protection of trade secrets in the past. bock legal represents both in the enforcement and defence of claims for breach of trade secrets and advises on the implementation of secrecy measures.
In addition, bock legal is also active in the field of drafting and enforcing all types of secrecy agreements, often referred to as Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDA), Confidentiality Agreements or Non-disclosure Agreements (nda) and advises on issues of protection of secrets in the employment relationship.