The object of the legal relationship of non-competition is the business secret to be protected by non-competition, which specifically includes: the interests of the obligee; Business secrets of the obligee; The right holder's use of human rights.
What's the difference between business secret protection and non-competition obligation?
1. The limitation period is different
According to the provisions of China's Labor Law, generally speaking, the responsibility to protect business secrets is indefinite, that is, after signing an agreement with the company to protect business secrets, workers are obliged not to disclose the company's business secrets for life, and they must continue to keep them confidential after leaving the company in time until they know that the business secrets are completely made public or are no longer recognized as business secrets. The prohibition of business strife is a restriction on workers. Generally speaking, it means that they are not allowed to engage in industries related to their original jobs for up to three years. The reason why such demands are made on workers is that they are afraid of vicious competition between workers and enterprises. The reason why there is a time limit is that only in this way can the interests of workers be guaranteed.
2, whether to pay the corresponding remuneration
Generally speaking, there is no corresponding remuneration for the confidentiality obligation of trade secrets, and the reason lies in the importance of trade secrets. For some special industries, keeping trade secrets is the basis for workers to enter the industry. When workers choose to engage in related industries, they must accept this obligation, so they must not disclose trade secrets because they have not given a certain confidentiality fee. On the other hand, the prohibition of business strife is different. The enterprise that asks for the prohibition of business strife should pay the workers a certain amount of compensation, because the prohibition of business strife makes the workers unable to engage in the corresponding work with their original skills, which will definitely affect the living standards of the workers, and therefore requires the enterprises to pay a certain amount of consideration.
3. Different definitions
Trade secret is a property right, and non-competition is a restrictive right. Trade secret is a special intangible property right, that is, intellectual property right. The Anti-Unfair Competition Law refers to the subject of trade secrets as "obligee", which obviously treats trade secrets as a kind of right. The Criminal Law classifies the crime of infringing trade secrets into the scope of "infringement of intellectual property rights" and juxtaposes the infringement of trade secrets with the infringement of registered trademark rights, patents and copyrights, which undoubtedly regards trade secrets as intellectual property rights. Moreover, the Criminal Law turns the obligee of trade secrets into the "owner", which shows that the obligee can enjoy the ownership of trade secrets.
Non-competition restricts the legal rights of workers. Since the resigned employees are not allowed to engage in the same or similar industries as the original enterprises, it will inevitably lead to employees' inability to make use of these livelihood skills and limit their personal development. However, this does not mean that the prohibition of business strife is illegal, because part of the employee's rights are restricted by agreement, that is, an obligation is set for the employee not to be employed in the agreed industry within a certain period of time. From the principle of equality of rights and obligations, the law is allowed.