영업비밀의 비공지성 및 경제적 유용성 요건

The Supreme Court Decision 2007Do9477, delivered on April 24, 2008, which dealt with informality and economic usefulness requirements of trade secret. proposed a meaningful criteria for judging the economic usefulness of circuit diagrams. Specifically, the Supreme Court holds that we should distinguish the fact that the abstract technical idea of the circuit diagram is known and the fact that the circuit diagram itself has been made public. Then it was ruled that if the information about the circuit diagram itself is not specifically known, economic usefulness may not denied simply because only abstract idea related to it was known, The ‘economic usefulness’ requirement of trade secret, along with ‘informality(non-publicity)’ and ‘confidentiality management’, should be proved by a trade secret holder. Although the latter two requirements are met, if it does not meet economic usefulness requirement, it will not be considered a trade secret. Once recognized as meeting the economic usefulness requirement, which will lead to recognize that the relevant business or technical information is recognized as having ‘economic value worth protecting’ and will be taken into consideration when judging informality or confidentiality management requirements, the economic usefulness requirement can be utilized to favor the trade secret holder.