JONES DAY PRESENTS®: Trade Secret Enforcement in France
Paris-based Jones Day partner Thomas Bouvet talks about the challenges involved in gathering evidence and the most difficult aspects of trade secret litigation in France. He also discusses the remedies available to wronged parties in trade secrets disputes.
Read the full transcript below:
Thomas Bouvet:
One of the difficulties of handling a trade secret matter is to be able to gather strong evidence Of the violation of trade secrets.
Thomas Bouvet:
In France we have the possibility of obtaining search orders at the beginning of the trial in order to start gathering evidence of this breach of trade secret. But very often we also need to rely on European cooperation between member states in order to gather evidence in other countries, and also sometime use U.S. discovery for the purpose of foreign proceedings in order to be able to gather all this evidence.
Thomas Bouvet:
One of the reason behind that is that in trade secret matters you not only need to demonstrate that the technology that is used by the wrongdoer is the same as the one that had been developed within your clients company, but also that the wrongdoers product has been developed using the knowledge that had been obtained initially, and this is the most difficult parts in trade secret matters.
Thomas Bouvet:
In France where the court has found that a trade secret has been breached there are several remedies that are available. The first one that we try to obtain is an injunction against the use of this trade secret. This is a difficult hurdle to pass because you need to convince the courts that without access to the trade secrets the wrongdoer would not have been able to develop the technology, either because it was too expensive to develop or too long to develop, or maybe just technically too difficult for them to develop.
Thomas Bouvet:
Another remedy which is available is damages. In this respect my team includes a legal economist that works for us and assists us on those matters. And in this respect we are notably able to obtain the infringer's profit. Other remedies that are available are the publication of the decision.
To view all of our JONES DAY PRESENTS® Trade Secret videos, please click on the playlist below.
