Trade secrets constitute an important part of a company’s IP portfolio and they are generally any practice or process not known outside of the company. Specifically, for a practice or process of a company to be considered a trade secret it must fulfil three criteria: (1) it must be secret (2) it must provide an actual or potential economic advantage for the company (3) it must be actively protected (i.e. the company must exercise reasonable measures to maintain it as a secret).

Some examples of trade-secret include scientific processes, formulas, product blueprints, algorithms, raw or processed data, software, manufacturing processes, customer lists, financial information, market research studies, internal costing and pricing information, etc.

Trade secret asset management is about the policies and procedures, processes and systems, education and governance defined and taken into use to help manage such assets. Simply deciding to keep something secret is not sufficient.