Companies often try to discover one another's trade secrets through lawful methods of reverse engineering on one hand and less lawful methods of industrial espionage on the other. Acts of industrial espionage are generally illegal in their own right under the relevant governing laws, of course. The importance of that illegality to trade secret law is as follows: if a trade secret is acquired by improper means (a somewhat wider concept than "illegal means" but inclusive of such means), the secret is generally deemed to have been misappropriated. Thus if a trade secret has been acquired via industrial espionage, its acquirer will probably be subject to legal liability for acquiring it improperly. (The holder of the trade secret is nevertheless obliged to protect against such espionage to some degree in order to safeguard the secret. As noted above, under most trade secret regimes, a trade secret is not deemed to exist unless its purported holder takes reasonable steps to maintain its secrecy.)


In Commonwealth common law jurisdictions, confidentiality and trade secrets are regarded as a negative equitable right rather than a property right (with the exception of Hong Kong where a judgment of the High Court indicates that confidential information may be a property right). The English Court of Appeal in the case of Saltman Engineering Co Ltd v. Campbell Engineering Ltd, (1948) 65 P.R.C. 203 held that the action for breach of confidence is based on a principle of preserving "good faith".


The law of protection of confidential information effectively allows a perpetual monopoly in secret information - it does not expire as would a patent or trade mark. The lack of formal protection, however, means that a third party is not prevented from independently duplicating the secret information.

Companies often try to discover one another's trade secrets through lawful methods of reverse engineering on one hand and less lawful methods of industrial espionage on the other. Acts of industrial espionage are generally illegal in their own right under the relevant governing laws, of course. The importance of that illegality to trade secret law is as follows: if a trade secret is acquired by improper means (a somewhat wider concept than "illegal means" but inclusive of such means), the secret is generally deemed to have been misappropriated. Thus if a trade secret has been acquired via industrial espionage, its acquirer will probably be subject to legal liability for acquiring it improperly. (The holder of the trade secret is nevertheless obliged to protect against such espionage to some degree in order to safeguard the secret. As noted above, under most trade secret regimes, a trade secret is not deemed to exist unless its purported holder takes reasonable steps to maintain its secrecy.)一方面这些公司常通过反向工程这类合法途经来找到其它公司的商业秘密，另一方面通过如行业(商业)侦探之类的不合法行为来找寻其它公司的商业秘密。当然，在恰当(合理)的法律系统下，行业侦探的行为本身通常是不合法的。通过行业侦探行为取得商业秘密是非法的要点在于：如果商业秘密是通过不当途径(可以是比‘非法途径’更广义的概念，但包括这类非法途径)，那么这类商业秘密就通常认为是被侵占了(私吞，侵权)。因此，如果一个商业秘密是通过行业侦探取得的，那么取得这个商业秘密的一方就可能要为其用不当手段取得该秘密而承担法律责任。(当然，拥有商业秘密的一方有义务保护自己的商业秘密，尽量阻止这类行业侦探事件发生，以保护该商业秘密。如前所述，在许多拥有商业秘密的公司里，商业秘密是不会存在的，除非该商业秘密的拥有者运用合理手段来保护其机密)。
In Commonwealth common law jurisdictions, confidentiality and trade secrets are regarded as a negative equitable right rather than a property right (with the exception of Hong Kong where a judgment of the High Court indicates that confidential information may be a property right). The English Court of Appeal in the case of Saltman Engineering Co Ltd v. Campbell Engineering Ltd, (1948) 65 P.R.C. 203 held that the action for breach of confidence is based on a principle of preserving "good faith".
在英联邦的通法系统中，机密及商业秘密被看作非公正的权益，而不是被看作财产权(香港是个例外，香港最高法院表明机密信息可以是财产权)。英国上诉法院在一九四八年关于撒而特曼工程公司对堪贝尔工程公司的案子里(1948) 65 P.R.C. 203 表明那些破坏信任的行为是基于保护‘信守诺言’基础上的。
The law of protection of confidential information effectively allows a perpetual monopoly in secret information - it does not expire as would a patent or trade mark. The lack of formal protection, however, means that a third party is not prevented from independently duplicating the secret information.
保护机密信息的法律有效的容许无限期的独自拥有秘密信息，而不象专利及商标那样有期限限制。然而，没有正式保护意味着不能限制第三方独立复制该商业秘密。