商業秘密權利主體的認定規則重構

由於商業秘密立法發展遲緩，司法實踐多類推知識產權制度填補法律漏洞，但其類推適用基礎存在爭議，商業秘密權利主體認定即為著例，立法對此未作規定，主流觀點類比知識產權制度采創造者說，少數觀點基於商業秘密的反不正當競爭定位采控制者說，數字環境下二者對立已不可調和，爭議核心在於對商業秘密與知識產權的屬性差異認知不同。理論上，與知識產權在全社會產生權利歸屬、利益排他的法律效果不同，商業秘密系基於對有價值信息佔有而產生的受法律保護的事實財產權；從經濟學原理出發，知識產權與商業秘密均旨在保護企業對創新成果的產權而糾正市場失靈，前者是以法律之力構建的完整排他性產權，後者是對企業私力構建事實產權的補充性保護。這決定了商業秘密制度不具備信息歸屬的分配效能，本質上作為一項防禦性權利，禁止一切不法私力侵害。故無法類推適用知識產權規則進行漏洞補充，應參照民法佔有制度，將商業秘密權利人界定為信息的合法控制者。

Due to the lagging development of trade secrets protection legislation, the Chinese courts usually apply the intellectual property law mutatis mutandis to fill the legal loophole of trade secrets protection, which causes great controversy. The determination of the right holder of trade secrets is the typical embodiment, since the legislation stipulates nothing regarding this issue. The mainstream view finds the creator of trade secrets as the right holder by analogy with intellectual property law, and the minority view favors the controller of trade secrets due to its anti-unfair competition attribute. The conflict between the two views is irreconcilable in the digital environment, and the core of the dispute lies in the different perceptions of the attributes of trade secrets and intellectual property. In legal theories, unlike intellectual property rights, which have the legal effect of benefit attribution and exclusion in the whole society, trade secrets are de facto property protected by law based on the of valuable information. From the economics perspective, both intellectual property and trade secrets protections aim to protect the enterprises’“property”in their innovative achievements to prevent market failures, yet their differences are that intellectual property has established a complete exclusive right by the force of law, while trade secrets just provide supplementary legal protection based on de facto control of the information by the private force of the enterprise. Overall, the protection of trade secrets does not have the legal effect of attribution and distribution of information, but just prohibits all illegal private forces as a defensive right. As a result, the courts should refer to the possession rules in civil law rather than intellectual property law to fill the legal loopholes and recognize the rightful controller of information as the right holder of trade secrets.