Companies with Trade Losses Intensify Corporate Trade Secret & Proprietary Information Managem

NAPERVILLE, Ill. - Jan. 14, 2014 - PRLog -- Naperville, January 14, 2014 – ipPerformance Group, a leader in best practices benchmarking corporate intellectual property law and management operations announces the release of its Corporate Trade Secret & Proprietary Information Management report. The findings indicate that companies are expanding their trade secret practices to reduce theft and misappropriation incidences.

“With growing concern regarding espionage and trade secret theft, companies are evaluating their trade secret programs and improving training programs at an increasing rate. More companies are aggressively training and formalizing policies.” says Robert Williamson, president at ipPerformance Group.

Among the findings that emerged from this research are the following:

* Overall, 90% of companies indicated that they have a function responsible trade secret management. Yet, only 48% of companies stated that they have formal processes in place for the identification and classification of trade secrets.

* 77% of companies indicated that they have corporate training that discusses trade secret and proprietary information protection practices.

* Compared to companies that did not experience misappropriation losses, twice as many companies that had a loss have formal processes in place for the identification and classification of trade secrets.

The topics that we investigated include: 1) Types of Proprietary Information Identified and Managed, 2) Functions Responsible for Managing Trade Secret, 3) Classifying and Auditing, 4) Identification and Classification Processes, 5) Training, 6) Misappropriation & Loss Incidents, 7) Cybercrime & APT (advanced persistent threats), 8) Executive Support, 9) Employee Communication, 10) Software Tools, and 11) Trade Secret Management & Tracking.

33 companies representing a variety of industries participated in this comprehensive study, including Freescale Semiconductor, Owens Corning, NOVA Chemicals, Clorox, Dow Corning, Oclaro, Praxair, Celanese, Swagelok, IBM Corp., Sun Chemical Corp. and Sasol.

A full report of the survey findings is available at ipPerformance Group’s website.

Other intellectual property asset management research topics include intellectual property management strategy and performance metrics, litigation and enforcement, trade secret management, intellectual property asset management software, training and education, open innovation, open source governance, patent search and analytics, intellectual property department operations, trademark strategies and practices, and licensing management.