The judge listed 11 reasons why the duty of confidence was owed, including that Skovmand was a consultant employed to develop new products; he was subject to the company's direction; much of the work was carried out by people employed by the company; the material was the result of advice from other people as well as Skovmand; and the company had paid for the raw materials used in the work.

After Justice Arnold stated the factors which would help to decide whether or not information was a trade secret, he said:
"All of these factors point more or less strongly towards the conclusion that the information contained in the Fence database, and in particular the recipes contained in that database, constituted VF's trade secrets,".

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