For the purposes of Law 1/2019 of 20 February 2019 on Trade Secrets (according to Article 1 thereof) “any information or knowledge, including technological, scientific, industrial, commercial, organisational or financial information or knowledge, which meets the following conditions, is considered to be a trade secret:

(a) it is secret in the sense that, as a whole or in the precise configuration and assembly of its components, it is not generally known to, or readily accessible by, persons within the circles in which the type of information or knowledge in question is normally used;

(b) have business value, either actual or potential, precisely because it is secret; and

(c) have been the subject of reasonable steps by the holder to keep it secret”.

            The three aforementioned requirements are cumulative. Regarding the requirement to have taken reasonable measures to keep the information secret, the Judgment considers that “the mere existence of a document specifying the company’s privacy policy does not in itself become a reasonable measure of protection of secrecy. In fact, it was sufficient to send the information from the company’s computer to a Gmail account in order to extract the information. Therefore, it cannot be considered an infringement of trade secrets within the meaning of art. 13 Unfair Competition Law, since the third of the cumulative requirements for its assessment, referring to the imposition of reasonable measures by the owner to maintain the secret, is not met”.

SAP of Madrid of 22 September 2023.a