A Revised Edition of the “Trade Secret Management Guidelines” Has Been Published.
更新日：21 時間前
Article information
Article type: Case note
Category: Unfair competition law, Patents
Topics: Inventive step, Trade secrets
First published on this website: 2026-11-01
Display and classification checked: November 2, 2026
Originally published on Ameblo: 2025-04-01 (Japan time). Full English translation.
A Revised Edition of the “Trade Secret Management Guidelines” Has Been Published.
Numerous criminal judgments are cited.
<Management as a Secret>
• Nagoya District Court, March 18, 2022 (2017 (Wa [criminal]) 427)
“Even for criminal measures, the requirements for qualifying as a trade secret are understood to be the same as the civil requirements, including in light of the history of the 2003 amendment to the Unfair Competition Prevention Act.”
For information consisting of a combination of multiple items of information, the determination depends on whether it is generally available outside the holder's control, considering such matters as the ease of combination and the time, money and other costs needed to obtain it.
• IP High Court, 2020 (Ne) 10066
Management as a secret should be determined from an objective perspective, including recognizability by employees as a whole, and is not affected by what each individual employee actually understood.
• IP High Court, 2010 (Ne) 10039; Tokyo District Court, December 9, 2022, 2021 (Toku-Wa) 129
Regarding the nature of the information, if it is important to the trade-secret holder and it is obvious to employees that it naturally must be managed as secret, management making use of that employee awareness should be permitted.
• Fukuoka High Court, 2024 (U) 20
Limiting the persons who have contact with the medium does not require strictly examining each employee's business need before granting access. Even if access is broadly granted within a particular department for operational needs or similar reasons, it remains limited to specified employees.
<Usefulness>
• Tokyo District Court, 2021 (Toku-Wa) 129; Tokyo District Court, 2022 (Toku-Wa) 2148
If the information is used or utilized in the business activities of the enterprise holding the trade secret, the need to protect it as a trade secret can basically be affirmed. Unless protection is inappropriate, for example because the information is contrary to public policy or morals, the usefulness requirement is satisfied. The assessment of usefulness is not affected by whether the person who wrongfully acquired the information can put it to effective use.
• Yokohama District Court, July 7, 2021, 2018 (Wa [criminal]) 1931
The purpose of protecting trade secrets under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act is to protect the competitively advantageous position obtainable through legitimately held information in order to prevent unfair competition and maintain competitive order, not to protect special information possessing inventive step. Thus, to qualify as useful technical information, the information need not necessarily produce “unexpected, particularly superior functions and effects.”
<Not Publicly Known>
• Tokyo High Court, 2021 (U) 1407
Information need not produce “unexpected, particularly superior functions and effects” to qualify as not publicly known.
• Nagoya High Court, 2020 (U) 162
The court affirmed that the information was not publicly known because learning it by analyzing a commercially available product required employing a paint manufacturer's knowledge and obtaining cooperation from raw-material manufacturers, among other things, and still took a certain amount of time; it was not information that anyone could easily learn.
• Osaka District Court, 2014 (Wa) 11151 and 2013 (Wa) 13167
The court rejected non-public status because the types and mixing ratios of the alloys used in the plaintiff's products on the market could readily be determined using component analysis, a generally available technical means whose costs were not excessive.
★ 27th Unfair Competition Prevention Subcommittee
List of Main Revisions to the “Trade Secret Management Guidelines”
Translator’s notes (editorial)
The source omits the final character of “information” in one passage; translated as information in context. The distinction between criminal hiragana-wa and civil katakana-wa docket codes is indicated in English.
Update history
The first-published date remains unchanged. Display maintenance, classification changes, related-article updates, and text corrections are recorded separately.
November 1, 2026: First published on this website.
November 2, 2026: Added article information, classification, topics, language navigation, related articles where the same case was confirmed, consultation guidance, and SEO. The original text and first-published date were preserved.
