CMS Know-how Protection

Know-how: crucial to success

Acquiring and protecting knowledge are now essential factors in the success of any organisation. Knowledge of technology, products and processes helps to determine how innovative a company is and the extent of its competitive edge.

Know-how protection and online risk analysis from CMS

Our online risk analysis tool helps you assess the level of know-how protection in your organisation. It enables you to gain an initial overview of the extent to which your organisation is vulnerable with regard to trade secrets and sensitive data.

New risks around know-how protection

As the business world becomes ever more interlinked and information processing chains grow longer, there is an increasing risk of confidential business information and sensitive data being intercepted and know-how falling into the wrong hands.

While modern communication technology facilitates the sharing of knowledge within organisations and with customers and business partners, decentralisation of corporate data (e.g. through the replacement of static storage with cloud-based systems), the increasing use of artificial intelligence, analysing large amounts of data and greater use of mobile devices also make companies more susceptible to industrial espionage, the unauthorised disclosure of business secrets or other unwanted outflows of know-how.

Know-how protection as a corporate challenge

Active know-how protection affects almost every area of a business – sensitive information is not limited to research and development departments. Employees who routinely have access to supplier and customer data, calculations and prices, business strategies or production reports all hold a wealth of knowledge that every company needs to protect.

From a commercial viewpoint, know-how is thus increasingly becoming at least as important as established intangible assets such as patents, trademarks and designs.

Complex legal situation surrounding company-related know-how

The legal situation on protecting know-how protection is complex. With regard to content, it has been largely harmonised across the EU through the Directive on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure ([EU] 2016 / 943 of 8 June 2016). However, how the Directive has been transposed into national law and how claims are asserted court differ, even within the EU Member States, and the differences in comparison to legal systems outside the EU are even greater.

It therefore remains a time-consuming process to justify the protection of know-how. It is imperative that companies take appropriate measures to ensure confidentiality long before a potential breach occurs. 

How do your know-how protection arrangements measure up? – Find out!

How well are trade secrets protected in your organisation? It takes just ten minutes to find out whether your company needs to take action to protect its know-how.

We have created a special online stress test to establish the level of risk: www.know-how-protect.de