Suitability of Trade Secrets Directive for the protection of patentable information from perspective of a startup company

Abstract

This research paper studies suitability of newly adopted European Parliament and the Council Directive no. 2016/943 - Trade Secrets Directive for protection of potentially patentable information from a startup company viewpoint. The goal of this paper is to assess what are those advantages which could encourage startup companies to use trade secrets as an alternative for patents in their information protection strategy as well as those imperfections which could the opposite – force to abstain from using trade secrets.