In China, the perfect of legislation and strict enforcement of law were the development trend of trade secret protection at present. To fundamentally solve the problem of evidence obtaining, more attention should be paid to technical problems of trade secret protection (Ledger Insights, 2020). As to the formulation of a unified Trade Secrets Law and Anti-Unfair Competition Law, they were to improve Block Chain to manage and protect trade secrets in qualified or feasible way (Zhang Huaiyin, 2019). About risks above, Block Chain in trade secret management was suggested to improve in the following aspects.
A. "Standard consensus + compatible consensus plug-in" mode
On September 7, 2018, "Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Trial of Cases by Internet Courts" was officially implemented. The status of Block Chain was recognized as evidence of electronic certificate storage in Article 11 of this Judicial Interpretation. It was the first legal confirmation of the legal status of Block Chain as electronic certificate storage in China. In the confirmation, Block Chain was allowed to collect, fix and tamper-proof data as evidence.
By the end of 2019, three internet courts were built in China: Hangzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou. Based on Block Chain, one "unified platform for judicial Block Chain of people's courts" was built in Chinese Supreme People's Court. More than 194 million pieces of data were completed with the work of uploading and storing certificates. Various local courts were stopped with Block Chain as well.
Obviously, the intention of Chinese Supreme People's Court was to build a high starting point, high standard to carry out judicial application in Block Chain electronic deposit. In local people's courts, judicial Block Chain building was allowed to continue to operate, albeit partial suspended. This fact showed the attitude of the Supreme People's Court. Block Chain was applied in judicial practice as a new data technology for electronic certificate storage. The purpose of judicial Block Chain was to make the consensus mechanism universally applicable in a wider scope, to allow local courts to operate Block Chain. There was a mechanism unified Block Chain and local Block Chain in forming a new compatible consensus model. The mechanism would make full use of resources to a certain extent. The universal application characteristics of Block Chain would be conformed as evidence technology support. More choices and convenience would be provided for parties. They were represented as the general trend of China's judicial Block Chain development in the future.
As mentioned above, the pledge of intellectual property rights was stipulated in Article 440, Civil Code of People's Republic of China. It stipulated that the pledge right would be established when the pledge registration was made. Adopted an enumeration mode, article 440 listed such intellectual property rights as patent right, exclusive right to registered trademark and copyright. To three types of intellectual property rights with an unified platform and system, the entries were simple and clear in their application. That was, it could be handled in a unified national registration institution. However, no unified national level platform was ready for the non-statutory publicity, and no uniqueness of intellectual property was absolute rights at present. They were easily held by such trade secrets holders as enterprises themselves. Once being a long-standing historical problem, it was easy to prove litigation involved. More practical significance could be found in the unified work of the Supreme People's Court on Block Chain platform for trade secrets. Once the trade secrets of trade secret owners were standing together with the chain, they would stand together with the national unified registration platform. The pledge registration would be completed by registration formalities once the trade secrets pledged. Thus, efficiency and cost were optimized simultaneously. However, the results were premised that a wider range would be covered by the judicial Block Chain platform of the Supreme People's Court. The premise of optimization was that the judicial Block Chain platform of the Supreme People's court needed to generally covered. At the same time, the Block Chain platform should have the function of efficient storage and processing of trade secrets (general Block Chain technology cannot achieve the storage and processing capacity of massive data quickly and efficiently). What was more, it can be operated more than judicial certificate storage.
B. Scheme for private key security
Up to now, the social significance and value of Block Chain were hotspot at home and abroad throughout theory and practice. However, data security in Block Chain could not be guaranteed as well as confidentiality requirements by any scheme, nor privacy requirements as data rights holders wanted. Encryption keys protection was still the primary problem faced by Block Chain (Louise Axon, Michael Goldsmith, Sadie Creese, 2018). The risk of encryption keys came from the process of storage and transaction before and after uploading. At present, encryption keys for transportation and transmission were easy to be stolen for its online or in the cloud. Being concealed, encryption keys were difficult to prove especially in the form of cloud storage. Such technical business secrets as technical information and customer information were put in the cloud by enterprises. The storage was equivalent to automatically open to cloud service providers. It was particularly urgent to explore appropriate legal protection for interests of enterprises. What was more, apart from the traditional password, some authentication links of identity or specific biological information would be developed by an encryption key. Some encryption information would be opened during point-to-point transaction. The authentication information could be changed at any time according to needs after transaction completed. Such identity or biological information above as facial expression and gesture can be changed by provider when it destroyed.
C. To build a secret block model
There was a fundamental conflict between the above requirements and the traceability and transparency of the Block Chain. Scholars once discussed the way to balance privacy and security in Block Chain. A user centered and privacy preserving certificate scheme was proposed based on Block Chain. The protocol allowed users to access services without exposing sensitive attributes. Based on efficient short signatures, pair-wise and self-blind credentials were verified on the Block Chain. The scheme realized the anonymity, unlinkability and untraceability of users. In addition, the confidentiality of user attributes was satisfied as well as the unforgeability of user credentials (Kalpana Singh, Omar Dib, Clément Huyart, Khalifa Toumi, 2020). Another case in point, one privacy protection method of license Block Chain based on blind signature was invented to protect trade secrets by users' blind signatures (Li Xianxian, 2019). The inherent transparency and full traceability of Block Chain was ended to a certain extent. At the same time, the technical advantages of Block Chain was affected in a certain extent. Traditional problem of proof was difficult returned once the trade secrets in the chain were stolen, once the traceability and transparency were blocked.
As mentioned above, any information would be accessed on the chain without barriers when loaded into cloud database. Immeasurable risks would be brought to the chain of trade secrets. Background access would record such access information in Block Chain platform as personnel, time and place. Whether there was a preventive mechanism in background access. Generally, the background processing Block Chain information was invisible as specific content on the surface. If you wanted to see it, you needed to open this door. Once you opened and visited it, you would start the traceability process similar to Block Chain, which ensured the security of information to a certain extent. A warning would be given to those who wanted to open and those who could open.
Trade secrets (information) in background database would be accessed or uplinked unlimitedly. In practice, the operation mode was generally based on the confidentiality agreement signed by both parties. However, it was difficult to determine the secret leakage traces caused by access. For example, instead of downloading at the beginning of the uplink, photos taken by visitors would be at risk of leakage. However, the condition was not in the scope of trade secrets confidential measures. Block Chain, as a carrier system of trade secrets information, would minimize the risk with corresponding technical prevention and control.
D. Legislation for trade secret protection
To effectively protect the information, the application of Block Chain should be standardize. In practice, information belong to trade secrets was often lack of legal protection. For example, banking, financial and shopping software downloaded in hand, needed to agree to obtain photos, videos, access address book, location and other protocol contents in the mobile phone before applied. Consumers were often received the prompt that our location information was acquired by a certain software. Few of us would care about the value of the acquired location information. None of us received reward from the enterprise acquired location information. The location information of natural persons was obtained by enterprise backstage. The acquirement showed that the information was valuable. Theoretically, the acquirement should be paid if information was valuable. However, the acquired person would not receive any remuneration from companies. Relevant national legislation lacks mandatory provisions made data leakage and illegal usage rampant. A natural person would give up even if he wanted to defend himself through litigation. It was impossible for a natural person to effectively prove which enterprise obtained what information during which period. Lack of clear legal basis, evidence of infringement was difficult to obtain as well. Data acquisition without cost was a typical behavior of violent plunder and profiteering.
Information protect could be regulated in the following two aspects:
First, Block Chain was penetrate into various fields of network data storage. Original acquisition, intermediate changes could be detailed traced as well as such process data as location and shopping preference. A complete evidence chain was provided for possible data leakage, data payment litigation and dispute resolution.
Second, it was to explore the feasibility of separate legislation formulating on trade secret consent. The basic legal aspects of China's legal norms of trade secrets were Civil Code of People's Republic of China (General Principles of Civil Law till January 1, 2021, Civil Code of People's Republic of China post January 1, 2021) and Anti-Unfair Competition Law of People's Republic of China. The former stipulated that trade secrets were legal objects of intellectual property rights, while the latter stipulated the definition and protection rules of trade secrets. From the perspective of concrete implementation, certain defects could be found in China's trade secret legislation and law enforcement system. It was to be improved urgently.
Subject of infringement should be improved. According to legislative spirit of "Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People's Republic of China", law direction to the subject of trade secrets infringement of should refer to operators and specific natural persons, legal persons and unincorporated organizations (the third party included). What is more, such malicious acts with specific infringement intentions was included as well as implementers of infringement parties. However, according to Article 1.3, Entry 2, Economic and Trade Agreement between Governments People's Republic of China and the United States of America signed by China and United States on January 15, 2020, China was responsible to define such "operator" infringing trade secrets as natural persons, organizations and legal persons. The definition would obviously expand the concept of "operator". More attention should be paid to the distinction in the process of protecting trade secrets once "operator" was referred in Anti-Unfair Competition Law. It was obviously that "operator" here meant a commercial subject with legal business qualifications in the commercial field. The commercial subject was consistent with the legislative essence of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. However, Trade Secret Protection Law would be corresponded once "operator" was defined as all natural person organizations and legal persons in a single law mode. It was seemed that China's subsequent legislative mode for trade secrets would like to turn to a separate legislative mode for trade secrets. However, the protection of trade secrets would be practically considered as a broad range of infringing subjects.
Subject of trade secret rights should be protected. According to Article 123 in Civil Code, all civil subjects were entitling to the obligee of trade secrets. However, the obligee's trade secrets were restrict to "commercial information" according to Article 9 in Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Anti-Unfair Competition Law was consistent with the identity of "operator" as a commercial subject, whereas natural persons were excluding in the general civil sense practically. However, as said above, it was of great commercial value for such information as personal location and shopping preferences acquired by ordinary natural persons on Internet. Data providers should be authorized with legal usage through agreements with original right holders and users. The authorization was just legal usage in current situation. However, it was unfair for the providers to be unpaid fundamentally. Data transfer to be authorized would be finally canceled once internet passive consent lacks independently choose. Actually, commercial organizations need to pay for consumers' personal information in countries with relatively complete personal credit information systems. For example, the location information and shopping preference would be obtained by the Japan company after users downloaded a mobile program company developed. The consumer would be got a corresponding value reward of 500 yen after obtaining personal location data for 3 months (Han Ming, 2019). It was showed that personal information of ordinary natural persons was more than the privacy attribute in the traditional civil sense beyond the essence of commercial profit.
The promulgation of China's Civil Code showed that China would adhere the legislative mode of civil and commercial integration, that China would continue to implement the legislative mode of separate law in commercial affairs. Trade secrets were defined as "business information" in Article 9 of Anti-Unfair Competition Law with two layers of meaning. The first was based on the subjective understanding enjoyed by the business subject. The second was based on the objective understanding of commercial behavior. Narrowed scope of civil subject in Article 123 of China's Civil Code, the legislative spirit of Anti-Unfair Competition Law obviously belonged to the first level. However, the category of commercial subject was obviously broken through from the value level of personal information digitization above-mentioned. To define the "commercial information" of commercial secrets was more appropriate and reasonable by commercial behavior. That is, although the digitization of personal information was not provided by commercial subject as stipulated by law, personal providing information of the current era was under the background when do business. In particular, the interpretation of the great significance of spreading the economy was put forward by Premier Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council of China, during the inspection of Shandong on June 1, 2020. It was more appropriate to understand "business" in terms of business behavior itself. The digital personal information provided by ordinary natural persons was not open to the public as consumers to businesses through Block Chain or other forms. There were still confidentiality requirements beyond commercial profit peer-to-peer. Objectively, basic requirements of trade secrets and conforms should conform the actual situation. It meant that ordinary natural persons would entangled with the substantive obligees of trade secrets in this respect. The situation was impossible to achieve in the scope of the current Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Therefore, a better choice should be chosen the unified and separate legislation of trade secrets in the future.