what is CI?
if recipient of information is under any confidentiality obligations, he may be sued for breach of confidence
what are the conditions for CI?
- necessary quality of confidence in the information
- circumstances surrounding the receipt of information, including those affecting the conscience of the recipient to bind him to confidentiality
- unauthorized used of the information by the recipient (to the detriment of the plaintiff)
what information can be protected?
information that is not in the public domain:
1. commercial information
2. private
3. government information
what information cannot be protected?
- information that has lost its quality of confidentiality, become widely known
- trivialities and vague information
what are the circumstances in which CI can be disclosed?
- recipient has agreed to keep confidentiality (verbal agreement or NDA)
- a fiduciary relationship with the plaintiff (lawyer-client)
- where the conscience of the recipient is affected
what is an example of an unauthorized use of CI by recipient?
- develop product
- make money
what are the remedies?
- bring a civil action against the party breaching confidence
- successfully prove the 3 elements of test of breach of confidence
- seek damages or accounts of profits and/or injunctions from the court
what if the difference between CI protection and patent protection?
- under law of confidence, newly developed technology may be protected as trade secrets
- since a patent application would be published (18 months from priority date) , information in the application would no longer enjoy CI
what are the advantages of CI protection?
- not being limited in time, can continue indefinitely long as long as secret is not revealed to the public
- keeping secrecy involves no registration cost
- does not require compliance with any formalities
what is patent?
patent is a set of rights to prevent others from commercially exploiting the invention without consent
how does it benefit inventors?
- it is a limited time monopoly
- gives the inventor a right to be named
how does it benefit the public?
- encourage innovations and exploitations
- disclosure of technical information - knowledge gain
- technologies will fall into public domain in time to come
reasons for patent?
- incentivise creativity and research and development
- in return the patentee has to disclose details of the invention for publication
what are the conditions for patent?
- industrial application - must have utility
- novelty - no prior art
- inventive step - involves an inventive step that is not obvious to a person skilled in the art
- sufficiency and clarity - specification of an application in which a skilled person in the art can replicate it
what is pct?
- it is an application not a patent
- administratively convenient - allows applicant to seek patent protection in several countries at the same time by filling in 1 application in 1 place, in 1 language, with 1 set of fees
- applicants get an international search report and an international preliminary report which serves to indicate patentability of invention
- applicants have more time (30 months) to decide if they want to proceed with an application in each of the designated countries while preserving priority date
