| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 法律學系 === 102 === For protecting trade secrets, most countries with civil law system set special chapters for it in the antitrust law, and others with common law system have the independent law or act. Taiwan, as the country with the civil law system, had learned the Uniform Trade Secret Act of United States to establish the independent Trade Secrets Act because of the pressure from the negotiation with United States at that time, although there was already the Fair Trade Act enforced. The Trade Secrets Act was then added the criminal penalties on January 30, 2013. The situation that the Fair Trade Act and the Trade Secrets Act are both enforced makes so many problems to be solved. To summarize this thesis, I think it is not proper for Taiwan to have the independent Trade Secrets Act and even have added the criminal penalties.
To be more detailed, the Amendment of the Trade Secrets Act with criminal penalties in Taiwan is referred to the Economic Espionage Act of United States. The Economic Espionage Act was legislated in 1996 to protect the intellectual properties of privacy enterprises by the governmental right. It was amended on 2012 and also 2014 to expand the protection categories and increase the limited amount of the fines, and the amendments were showed the determination of the US government. The Amendments of Trade Secrets Act in Taiwan was not just to add the criminal penalties, but also have the rules that would be punished more if using other enterprises’ trade secrets outside the Taiwan. The articles in the Amendment were designed following the Economic Espionage Act of United States, but the models and the legislation meanings were not similar to it. Moreover, the wordings in the Amendment are not accurate. Comparing to the existed regulations in the civil law system, there may be disputes when using the articles.
Now for solving this odd situation that the similar protecting trade secrets content is booth in the Trade Secrets Act and the Fair Trade Act because of the maybe wrong legislation in the beginning, the Fair Trade Commission has proposed and the proposal is already passed the first reading in the Legislation Yuan to remove the Paragraph 5 of Article 19 in the Fair Trade Act about the protection of trade secrets. This is the only way trying to avoid this strange parallel acts situation and go back the regulations about protecting trade secrets only in the Trade Secrets Act.
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