To Be and Not to Be an IPR – The Protection of Trade Secrets in the EU

No international consensus has developed regarding the classification of trade secret as an Intellectual Property Right, a piece of property or something different. This article argues that one should not from the abstract classification of the nature of the protection of trade secrets seek to infer legal consequences and that classifying trade secrets could well be a matter of degrees; for some purposes, it might make sense to see trade secrets as an IPR whereas for other it does not. Using the example of the Enforcement Directive and TRIPS it is pointed out how these legal regimes classify trade secrets protection in different ways but also that they do so for the same purpose which is problematic.