The legal remedies for infringement upon trade secrets are subject to the general civil procedure rules under PRC laws. We briefly summarize the most common remedies below for trade secret infringement in civil litigations.
According to Article 15 of the Provisions, if a respondent has acquired, disclosed, used or allowed other persons to use any trade secret claimed by a right holder by improper means or attempts to do so, the pertinent People's Court may legally rule to take the behavior preservation measure, e.g. interim injunction to cease infringement immediately, if otherwise it would be difficult to enforce the relevant judgment or cause other damage to any party concerned, or cause irreparable damage to the right holder's legitimate rights and interests. If any of the aforesaid circumstances fall under the emergency circumstances set out in Article 103 and Article 104 of the PRC Civil Procedure Law, the pertinent People's Court shall make a ruling within 48 hours. Therefore, precautionary measures for trade secret infringement cases are available under PRC laws.
According to Article 179 of the PRC Civil Code, the main forms of civil remedies include: cessation of the infringement; removal of the nuisance; elimination of the danger; restitution; restoration; repair, redoing or replacement; continuance of performance; compensation for damages; payment of liquidated damages; elimination of adverse effects and rehabilitation of reputation; and extension of apologies. Punitive damages may be allowed under specific circumstances. According to Article 17 of the AUCL, the aforesaid remedies are applicable to infringement of trade secret on a case-by-case basis. The most common remedy should be compensation for damages in practice.
According to Article 17 of the AUCL, the amount of compensation for damage caused by any unfair competition act (including trade secret infringement) to a business operator shall be determined depending on the actual losses suffered by such operator as a result of the infringement. If it is truly difficult to work out the actual losses, such amount shall be determined in accordance with the benefits obtained by the infringer from the infringement. If a business operator commits a trade secret infringement in bad faith, and if the circumstances are grave, the amount of compensation may be determined as between one time and five times the amount determined under the foregoing method. The amount of compensation shall also include the reasonable expenses for stopping the infringement. If a business operator commits a trade secret infringement, and it is truly difficult to determine the actual losses suffered by the right holder as a result of the infringement or the benefits obtained by the infringer from the infringement, the People's Court shall award the right holder with damages less than RMB 5 million, depending on the seriousness of the infringement.
Social Media cookies collect information about you sharing information from our website via social media tools, or analytics to understand your browsing between social media tools or our Social Media campaigns and our own websites. We do this to optimise the mix of channels to provide you with our content. Details concerning the tools in use are in our privacy policy.