As reported gazeta.uz President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov on September 11 signed the law «On commercial secret.» The law regulating relations in the field of protection and use of trade secrets was adopted by the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis on June 18 and approved by the Senate on August 28. The document was published in the newspapers Narodnoye Slovo and Khalk Suzi on September 12 and comes into force from this day.

According to the law, commercial secrets are information that has commercial value in scientific and technical, technological, production, financial and economic and other spheres due to its unknown to third parties, which is not freely accessible on legal grounds and the owner of this information takes measures to protect it confidentiality.

The law also defines the notions of «confidentiality of commercial secrets», «proprietor of commercial secret», «confidential», «disclosure of trade secrets» and «commercial secret regime».

The content and volume of commercial secrets is determined by its owner. At the same time, commercial secrets must meet the following requirements: to have actual or potential commercial value for its owner because of its unknown to third parties, not to be generally known or generally available, to be provided with measures to protect its confidentiality and not to have signs of state secrets and other legally protected secrets.

The law defines the list of information that is not considered a trade secret (see below), the rights of the owner of a trade secret, the term of its protection, the issues of establishing, changing or repealing the regime of trade secrets, measures to protect trade secrets, including in the process of labor relations and at interaction of managing subjects.

In accordance with the law, commercial secret may be provided by the owner or confidant on the basis of a motivated requirement of the state body on a gratuitous basis, if the authority of this body includes requesting such information. At the same time, the state body is obliged to create conditions that ensure the confidentiality of the commercial secrets granted to them.

Separately, the law specifies the limits of acquaintance with a commercial secret in court. During the trial, the familiarization of the court and the persons participating in the case with commercial secret is allowed in the part relating directly to the substance of the dispute in which the owner of the trade secret or the confidential person acts as the plaintiff or the defendant.

Information that can not constitute a trade secret:

on property rights and transactions on them, subject to state registration;

• contained in the constituent documents of the legal entity, documents confirming the fact of making entries about legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and dehkan farms without forming a legal entity in the relevant state registers;
• contained in the documents giving the right to carry out entrepreneurial activities;
• on the composition of the property of the state unitary enterprise, state institution and on the use of the corresponding budget funds;
• on environmental pollution, fire safety, sanitary and epidemiological and radiation conditions, food safety and other factors that have a negative impact on the safe operation of production facilities, the safety of each citizen and the general population;
• the number and composition of employees, the system of payment and working conditions, including labor protection, occupational injury rates and occupational diseases, and the availability of vacancies;
• on employers’ debts for payment of wages and social benefits;
• violations of the law and facts of accountability for committing these violations;
• on the terms of tenders or auctions for the privatization of state property;
• the size and structure of income of non-commercial organizations, the size and composition of their property, their expenditures, the number and pay of employees (members) of these organizations, the use of unpaid labor of citizens in the activities of a non-profit organization;
• on the list of persons entitled to act without a power of attorney on behalf of a legal entity;
• to be submitted as state statistical reporting.