Din kunskap, Min hemlighet - en uppsats om problematiken kring företagshemligheter och konkurrensklausuler

Sammanfattning: Sweden’s business-market has change a lot during the recent decades, where the society have gone from being industrialbased to knowledgebased, where organizations has gone from hierarchy to “flat” and now we use brains instead of machines. This has led to an increasing need of protection for employers. Greater responsibility, closer customer relationships and indirect control from management has extended the span of workers to, among other things, take important decisions for the company. To make work effective for workers with this responsibility, management makes sure that the employee has all information needed, including secret documents. Hence, the number of employees that knows about business secrets has increased in many organizations. Increased control and insight into the company combined with individual knowledge can easily become a concern for the employer ones the employee ends the employment. Valuable knowledge can be lost since the employee easily can take confidential information with him, if not in document then in pure knowledge. Act (1990:409) on the protection of trade secrets was added to employers’ sake in the early 1990. The question now is if the law is equally applicable to the knowledge society as is was to the industrial. During the employment the employer is protected against the risk of employees spreading secrets outside the company through their duty of loyalty. The duty of loyalty is a deeply rooted and widely accepted duty and it is of great importance when it comes to the employers and the employees’ relationship. The employer has a responsibility and an obligation to ensure a pleasant and safe working environment and to offer training and rehabilitation for needy employees. The employees have in their return a responsibility to put the employer’s interest above their own and to avoid a duty collision. In this paper, the two most important obligations have been highlighted, namely the duty to keep a secret and competition ban. These obligations are only active under the employment. After an ended employment, the employee is free to use personal knowledge, experiences and skills including secret information from the company. Most of the time employers want to prevent this from happening. To extend the duty of loyalty, a so-called non-competition clause is included in the employees’ contract. With the knowledge society improvement, the need for this kind of clauses has increased and today they are used more than ever. Knowledge about when the clause is alright to use and under what conditions is not obvious to all employees. The private sector is ruled by freedom of contract which affects the use of clauses. Especially this sector has been affected by the change on the business-market. More companies are crossing over to the private sector and freedom of contract is available for more employers and employees. This increases the need for a clearer regulation concerning clauses.