Josh Lerner's study of five hundred and thirty U.S. companies in the early 1990s found that 43 percent of the intellectual property case disputes that arose among these companies involved trade secrets. Trade secret damages are one of the most critical issues in trade secret disputes.
As a pioneer in intellectual property protection, the protection of trade secrets in the United States can be traced back to the protection jurisprudence formed in the mid-19th century. The original theory of trade secret damages was summarized by Anna L. Johns as three including contract law, legal or factual default contract and tort.
The United States is a typical case law country, but in modern times, they have also begun to recognize the importance of statutory law, since the 1930s, the American Bar Association and the American Law Society began to issue the "Anti-Unfair Competition Law Restatement", "Uniform Trade Secrets Act" and "Tort Law Restatement", thus forming the main legal source of the modern American trade secret damages principle and method with precedents.
Although the Uniform Trade Secret Act is formally enacted in state law, the principle of punitive damages and the principle of compensatory nature of U.S. trade secrets are established in the Uniform Trade Secret Act, which is widely applicable and provides for three types of damages for trade secrets, including a reasonable royalty, the unjust enrichment of the infringer, and the actual loss of the right holder loss）。
The subsequent Restatement of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law further stipulates four methods for calculating damages, including the rights holder's losses, the infringer's profits, cost comparisons and reasonable royalties. At the same time, the US courts have also realized the difficulty of calculating trade secret losses in many years of trial practice, so they also allow the right holder to claim damages in various forms in litigation.
Feel that the above content is not enough, do not rush. The author has sorted out a series of legal knowledge articles for you according to the most frequently consulted issues in the case, taking you to understand the pits and benefits in the legal relationship, want to know more, just pay attention to this headline number!
bibliography:
[1] robert p. merges, peter s. menell, mark a. lemley: intellectual property in the technological age (fourth edition), aspen publishers, 2006, p34-35.
[2] Li Chunhua, Wang Hexin, "Comparison of Trade Secret Infringement Relief Systems in the United States and Japan", Shandong Social Sciences, No. 6, 2003.
[3] see utsa § 3 (a)
[4] see restatement of the law, third, unfair competition, § 45, cmt. d.