Discussion On Legal Mechanism For Balancing The Conflict Between Enterprise Information Disclosure And Trade Secrets Protection

Reform of “Easy Access and Strict Supervision” commercial system is vigorously deepening from macroscopic framework to institutional implementation step by step.Enterprise Information Disclosure System,a critical measure in the second wave of commercial system reform and the carrier of credit supervision idea,is becoming increasingly perfect from its initial establishment in the announcement of the Interim Regulation on Enterprise Information Disclosure and the supplementary five regulations in August 2014 to the general completion of “National Net” of it nowadays.As a role of double-edged sword,Enterprise Information Disclosure supervises enterprises' credit,and meanwhile,it also affects the enterprises' trade secrets which might be in a trespass without full attention.In this sense,Enterprise Information Disclosure is like a “spear” and Trade Secrets Protection is like a “shield”,it is so contradictory that the conflicts between these two institutional functions are visible.The confidential operation mode on which Trade Secrets Protection relies provides the shadow area of protection for itself,which is contrary to the Enterprise Information Disclosure System that attempts to increase transparency of more enterprise-related information through disclosure,and there are fierce conflicts on its' ways of system function which is mainly reflected by the conflicts between the rights to know enterprise information that the public and creditors required and the trade secrets rights.External expansion of the system caused by the promotion and implementation of Enterprise Information Disclosure will objectively and undoubtedly result in increasing tensions with the Trade Secrets Protection.Based on the above conflicts,it is necessary to establish relevant legal mechanism to balance them.However,there are still possibilities to maintain their balance on the condition of such conflicts.From objectives of both superficial and in-depth,what Enterprise Information Disclosure demonstrates is the mode of “market order supervision for sound development of enterprises” and Trade Secrets Protection reflects a mode of “sound development of enterprises for market order supervision”,which shows the tendency of cross unity of these two.With an outside-in manner,Enterprise Information Disclosure imposes the disclosure obligations on enterprises to force them “to be good” and maintain the market competition order under the social supervision.Differently,Trade Secrets Protection maintains the market competition order by endowing enterprises with the rights to fight against “evilness” of market subjects and stop the unfair competition behaviors in its field by an inside-out manner.In maintaining the market competition order,the two all roads lead to Rome.Otherwise,the identity of both in the message objects provides a solution of information regulation for balancing the two.Principle of interests balance is a guiding principle for the construction of balanced legal mechanism between Enterprise Information Disclosure and Trade Secrets Protection.Carrying the heavy mission of credit supervision,Enterprise Information Disclosure System is still underway as a reform policy,and it should focus on reform benefits of the commercial system and give more institutional development space for Enterprise Information Disclosure and even the whole “Strict Supervision” system while designing balanced legal mechanism between the Enterprise Information Disclosure and Trade Secrets Protection.Principle of interests balance will be adopted to guide the propensity allocation of information resources under the background of Enterprise Information Disclosure,as well as coordinate the interest contradiction between social public and individual private enterprises,so as to promote the construction of balanced legal mechanism.Based on the division of enterprises scale,multi-level enterprise information disclosure system implements the differential allocation of disclosure information that gradually increases the enterprise's information disclosure obligations from the small scale to a large one,so as to protect the related rights to know and trade secrets rights at the same time.Independent disclosure system of enterprise information gives the enterprise information disclosure autonomy to protect its trade secrets rights and interests.However,based on the investigation of enterprises' special situation and purposed for protecting the rights to know of enterprise involved public and creditors,compulsory disclosure system of enterprise information forces to public the enterprise specific information.Bidirectional adjustment mechanism matched by independent disclosure system and compulsory disclosure system coordinates the conflicts between Enterprise Information Disclosure and Trade Secrets Protection.In the relative disclosure system of trade secrets,as the last barrier of trade secrets protection in the Enterprise Information Disclosure,the exemption system of trade secrets provides supplementary protection for enterprise trade secrets;the approved disclosure system of trade secrets approves the disclosure of trade secrets based on the necessity of market supervision disclosure.The two are mutually restricted and interactive.Acting from different dimensions,the above systems jointly seek the balance between Enterprise Information Disclosure and Trade Secrets Protection.