Spring has arrived, and in addition to cleaning, it’s a good time to reassess how your company is handling its trade secrets.
Far from being static, trade secret innovations, processes, and data evolve over time. Business needs and situations change. Although trade secrets do not have a time for planting and a time for reaping, taking a regular look at how your company is handling trade secrets will help to ensure your trade secrets are always in-season. The new trade secrets you developed six months ago should be evaluated to ensure they are being handled appropriately in your organization.
Every vehicle has a maintenance schedule with regular oil changes, inspections, etc. If you would not let your vehicle go more than a year without an oil change or inspection, why would you let your company’s trade secrets go more than a year without verifying that needed repairs (revisions to policy, procedure) are addressed?
Here is an eight-step process to spring clean and tune up your trade secret portfolio:
- Make a list trade secrets, particularly the most valuable.
- Assign a value level (choose ~3-5 levels) based on value to the business. Ask what happens to the business if this trade secret was to be in the hands of a competitor.
- Identify where they are stored and who has access (internal and external), and whether this method of storage and level accessibility is appropriate and necessary.
- Check electronic access, verify password protection, and that the permissions are appropriate
- Check physical access
- Verify employees are under an obligation to keep information confidential, and to assign all IP to the company.
- For external parties who may obtain access, verify they are under NDA.
- Mark documents regarding trade secrets as “Confidential” or “Confidential-Trade Secret.”
- Verify offboarding procedures.
- Exit interviews
- Access removal
- Verify onboarding procedures and prohibit use of third-party trade secrets.
