Supreme Court Decisions

Interesting Article
In this case, the plaintiff sued the defendant for infringement of trade secrets under the Trade Secrets Act B.E. 2545, alleging that the defendant had disclosed information concerning electricity generation using wind power in advertising materials, thereby causing damage to the plaintiff.However, the plaintiff did not clearly explain how the information relied upon constituted trade information having commercial value. The complaint did not identify the specific information that was maintained as confidential and did not describe any measures adopted to preserve its secrecy.The plaintiff also failed to allege facts showing that the disclosure caused the information to lose its confidential character with the intention of causing damage, or other facts sufficient to satisfy the statutory elements under Sections 33 and 35 of the Trade Secrets Act B.E. 2545.When the plaintiff appealed, it merely referred to the previous testimony of its witnesses and did not identify any specific legal error in the judgment of the Court of First Instance. The appeal therefore did not satisfy the requirements applicable to appeals under Section 38 of the Act for the Establishment of and Procedure for the Intellectual Property and International Trade Court B.E. 2539.The Supreme Court accordingly dismissed the plaintiff’s case.

Interesting Article
In this case, the plaintiff sued the defendant for trade secret infringement, alleging that the defendant had improperly used the plaintiff’s customer lists and business strategies for its own benefit.The Court held that information such as customer names, contact persons, telephone numbers, and email addresses could be obtained from publicly available sources, including printed publications and general websites. Such information therefore did not qualify as a trade secret within the meaning of Section 3 of the Trade Secrets Act B.E. 2545.The Court further held that although the plaintiff had introduced password restrictions controlling employee access to the information, that fact alone was insufficient to establish trade secret protection. If the information did not require substantial time, effort, or resources to compile and could easily be obtained independently by competitors, it did not possess the confidential character required for protection as a trade secret.As to the alleged business strategies and contractual information, the plaintiff claimed that they were confidential but failed to identify or prove that they involved any specific strategy materially different from those used by competitors. To the extent that the claimed advantage consisted merely of an employee’s personal skill, knowledge, or ability, it likewise did not fall within the protection afforded by trade secret law.This judgment confirms that commercial usefulness alone does not make information a trade secret. The information must be genuinely confidential, not generally accessible, and commercially valuable because of its secrecy before it can receive protection under the Trade Secrets Act.

Interesting Article
In this case, the plaintiff sued the defendants for damages arising from alleged trade secret infringement. The plaintiff claimed that the second defendant, a former employee, had taken customer information and freight-pricing data and used it to establish a competing business.The Supreme Court’s Intellectual Property and International Trade Division held that the information relied upon by the plaintiff did not satisfy the requirements for a trade secret under Section 3 of the Trade Secrets Act B.E. 2545.Although the information had commercial value, the evidence showed that the plaintiff kept passwords displayed at computer workstations and did not maintain any clear system for classifying, restricting, or controlling access to important documents. Ordinary employees could therefore gain access to the information relatively easily.The Court consequently found that the plaintiff had failed to adopt appropriate measures to preserve the confidentiality of the information.As a result, the customer lists and freight-pricing information did not qualify as trade secrets protected by law. The plaintiff’s appeal was unsuccessful, and the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of First Instance dismissing the claim.