You are the head of a public company’s manufacturing department in Taiwan as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that accepts orders from the globe. Your department has collected manufacturing parameters, accumulated rich experience to improve efficiency and optimize costs, and created sustainable competitive advantages. Which of the following is the most critical concern to protect the manufacturing parameters from the perspective of intellectual property?
A. The ownership of the parameters
B. The secrecy of the parameters
C. The innovation of the parameters
D. The expression of the parameters

Kindly be reminded that the suggested answer is for your reference only. It doesn’t matter whether you have the right or wrong answer. What really matters is your reasoning process and justifications.

My suggested answer is A. The ownership of the parameters.

Intellectual property has an owner, or it would belong to the public domain. “Trade secrets are intellectual property (IP) rights on confidential information which may be sold or licensed.” (WIPO) Your company may not have the ownership of manufacturing parameters as intellectual property because OEM customers typically claim the ownership in the contract. If so, your company may be required and have an obligation to protect manufacturing parameters’ secrecy instead of the trade secret right. As a result, ownership should be first considered before claiming the rights of intellectual property.

• The secrecy of the parameters implies trade secrets.
• The innovation of the parameters implies patents.
• The expression of the parameters implies copyrights.

Generally, three steps must be met in order for an item of information to qualify as a trade secret:
– Secrecy: The information must be sufficiently secret, in the sense that it is not generally known or easy to compile. Note that confidential personal information related to a business’ customers is protected by privacy law and not by trade secret law.
– Commercially valuable: The information must provide the owner with a competitive advantage or some sort of economic benefit because it is secret – not because of any inherent merit in it.
– Reasonable measures: The owner must have taken reasonable security efforts to maintain the secrecy of the information.

Source: WIPO

Reference

• Obtaining IP Rights: Trade Secrets
• Frequently Asked Questions: Trade Secrets Basics

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您是台灣一家上市公司製造部門的負責人，這是一家接受全球訂單的原始設備製造商(OEM)。 您的部門已經收集了製造參數、積累了豐富的經驗以提高效率和優化成本、並創造了可持續的競爭優勢。 從智慧財產的角度，以下哪項是保護生產參數應該思考的最關鍵問題？
A. 參數的所有權 (ownership)
B. 參數的保密性 (secrecy)
C. 參數的創新 (innovation)
D. 參數的表達 (expression)