Trade Secrets, Big data and Artificial Intelligence Innovation: a Legal Oxymoron?

This chapter will analyse the Trade secret Directive from a technological informed legal perspective, looking at the possibilities and scope of protection that it offers for knowledge based activities and business models. It opens by restating the basic yet important fact that “Information is power”. Asymmetries in information are a fundamental transaction cost and in this sense informational quality and quantity translates into economic competitive advantage. Different types of informational resources have for long been an important asset of businesses. Informational technologies, automated data retrieval and cross reference will produce large quantities of valuable data that can be used for research, development and marketing of all types of products and services. Big data is not static data, is real time data, searchable and able to produce new data. Such data will constitute an important immaterial asset and trade secrets an important form of legal protection. However, and as a reverse side of the coin, Artificial Intelligence and data mining tools pose a considerable challenge to trade secrets as a legal concept.