ABSTRACT
Business depends on a range of innovations that are only capable of protection by confidential information (trade secrets or know-how). The confidential information confers significant advantages to the holder and significant benefits to society as a whole. In this chapter, our principal focus is on the way in which the action for breach of confidence operates in the commercial world (traditional breach of confidence). The law of confidential information, in a business context (as opposed to personal privacy), is essentially a legal methodology for stopping some types of economically valuable information being used by others without permission. It is an entirely abstract concept; there is no registered right to evaluate or assess. It is not like patents, copyright or design where a particular ‘thing’ is afforded protection. Rather, certain information or know-how is valuable precisely because it is confidential and not in the public domain. The extent of the confidential information or know-how is usually difficult to establish with certainty. The confidential information monopoly is very broad as it may involve protection of the whole of a commercially significant idea, potentially forever. Indeed, it is a requirement of the doctrine of breach of confidence that the confidential information must not become publicly known.
