[Attribute it to the New Year if you will - I am starting to produce my weekly Letters, suitably updated, to give students an introduction to each chapter of the Module Guide. But I am starting with chapter 5, and will catch up with the earlier (non-substantive) ones soon.]
Dear Alex,
This week you study breach of confidence, which for London students is covered in chapter 5 of the subject guide. This is the first piece of substantive law in this module, and it is ancillary to intellectual property in the strict sense. Breach of confidence is the name of the legal action, and it protects confidential information. The information which is protected may be of any type: the subject guide explains that it may be personal, commercial or state information, and that covers just about everything. You might read about trade secrets, which are to some extent now a distinct topic – long recognised in US law, they are now the subject of an EU directive which came into effect in the UK in June 2018 – although it does not make many changes to the law. In fact, trade secrets are probably the most important part of this area of law: this is where the information concerned is most valuable, and where the relationship between breach of confidence and intellectual property law is closest.
Until the directive came into force there was no statutory law in this area, at least as far as though the syllabus is concerned. The Official Secrets Acts and the Data