TRADESECRET

Trade secret

A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred to as "confidential information", but are generally not referred to as "classified information" in the United States, since that refers to government secrets protected by a different set of laws and practices.

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trade secret

Noun

  1. A formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information used by a business to obtain an advantage over competitors within the same industry or profession.
  2. A formula, practice, device, idea, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not patented and which is used by the owner to obtain an advantage over competitor within the marketplace and is treated in a way that can reasonably be expected to prevent the public or competitors from learning about it except when there is improper access, eavesdropping, data acquisition or theft (where the country's law recognises theft) of that trade secret and where the implementation of the trade secret does not allow reverse engineering.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: trade secret
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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