Trade secrets, like many intellectual property rights, can be of high importance to the development of a business and can often even be crucial to its existence. Businesses must ensure that their business processes, technological know-how and sensitive information are properly secured. A trade secret may refer to an exercise, method, design, instrument or montage of date or information relating to a business about which public is generally unaware. The owner takes all reasonable measures to keep it as a secret. Such information may comprise of the economic policies or any other important policies which if leaked then may cause a big loss to the company. 

Three main components of the trade secrets are:

• That general public shouldn’t be aware of it only the people who deal with the work requiring this information will be aware of it.
• That secret should have commercial importance.
• The legal owner or owners must take reasonable care to keep it as a secret.

In India, there is no specific legislation to deal with the cases on trade secrets though the Indian Courts follow the method of equity, justice and sometimes use a common-law action of breach of confidence, amounting to the breach of contractual duties. 

Certain remedies are provided to the owner of trade secrets. Some of them are:

• He/she can obtain an injunction to prevent the licensee from disclosing trade secrets.
• He/she can ask to return all the confidential information or papers.
• He/she can ask for the compensation for the losses suffered as a result of the disclosure of trade secrets.

In India, a person can be legally bound through a contract not to disclose anything he is being told in confidence. In Technology Transfer Agreement, the Indian courts have put the restrictive clause stating that if any licensee is provided with the personal information to do some work, he can neither use that information for any other work nor can he disclose that information to anyone. In the case of John Richard Brady and Ors. V. Chemical Process Equipments P. Ltd and Anr, the Delhi High Court put the wider equitable jurisdiction and provided injunction even when there was no contract. The plaintiff invented the “Fodder Production Unit” (FPU) and, for indigenous production, the same thermal panels demanded from the defendant. In the phase, plaintiff exchanged technical information, detailed know-how, sketches and specifications related to the “Fodder Production Unit” with the defendant. An agreement was reached between the parties on the supply of specialized thermal panels, but no order was placed later by the complainants after they discovered that the defendants were unable to supply the required thermal panels. When the plaintiff came to know about the defendant’s Fodder Production System, he filed the suit alleging misuse of the know-how information, sketches, designs and other relevant information disclosed to the defendant.