From Internationallawoffice.com
Its a little dated but trade secrets decisions from other countries are not often reported
Contributed by Roschier, Attorneys Ltd
On March 30 2007 the District Court of Helsinki issued an order prohibiting a software company that specialized in tailored software products from (i) exploiting the trade secrets of a fellow software company or any of its affiliates, and (ii) recruiting any employees of the fellow integrated information and communication technology solutions company. The court imposed a conditional fine of €750,000 for use of trade secrets and €100,000 for breach of the recruitment prohibition. The prohibition on using trade secrets extends until February 2011 and the prohibition on recruitment was in force until June 2007, on the condition that the plaintiff took appropriate court action within one month of the date of the court's decision on such precautionary measures.
The dispute between the companies originated in early 2006 when the software companies con-ducted negotiations on, among other things, a partnership whereby the plaintiff would have acted as an integrator in projects related to the defendant's products. In connection with these discussions, an affiliate of the plaintiff (of which the plaintiff owned 100%) concluded a letter of intent with the defendant including a non-disclosure agreement and a prohibition of recruitment to remain in force during the term of the letter of intent and for 12 months thereafter. The negotiations discontinued and the defendant was later accused of using the plaintiff's trade secrets and recruiting at least eight of its former employees in breach of the non-solicitation obligation. The defendant had demonstrably offered the plaintiff's recruited former employees to the plaintiff's customers' software projects. In the plaintiff's view, this could not have been done without the use of the confidential information related to the software held by the plaintiff, which must have been disclosed either during the negotiations or by its former employees.
The court upheld that the broad definition of 'confidential information' was to include almost all non-public information regarding the plaintiff's software and software projects. Consequently, the court decided that as the discussions were conducted between the group companies of the parties, the non-disclosure agreement would also protect the plaintiff's trade secrets even though it had not signed the agreement (the agreement was signed by its subsidiary) and therefore was not a party to the agreement.
It remains to be seen how this policy of protection will be upheld in the actual trial, but the case would seem to promote a rather wide protection for software businesses under the laws against the abuse of trade secrets.
