Part II

There are two types of scenarios in which civil procedural law is called upon to respond, through means appropriate to the need—recognized by positive law—to protect economic information treated as confidential.

On the one hand, there is the issue of sanctioning, through civil procedural law, acts that violate the protection of trade secrets. Typically, these remedies are limited to actions for unfair competition, a type of action that has taken on new forms through Government Emergency Ordinance No. 100/2005 on ensuring compliance with industrial property rights.

On the other hand, in situations where the proceedings do not concern the protection of trade secrets, the issue nevertheless arises of admitting evidence that discloses confidential information, whether pertaining to one of the parties to the proceedings or to a third party. In such cases, solutions must be found that reconcile the imperative of protecting trade secrets with the fundamental principles of civil procedure, in particular the adversarial principle, equality of arms, and public access to proceedings. We examine these solutions both from the perspective of the current Code of Civil Procedure and from the perspective of supranational case law applicable to Romania, comparative law, and the future Code of Civil Procedure, the draft of which is under debate in Parliament at the time of this study’s writing.

Keywords: trade secret, duty of confidentiality, professional secrecy, official secrecy, unfair competition, injunctive relief, presidential ordinance, petition, specific performance, protection of intellectual property rights, publicity, adversarial proceedings, equality of the parties in litigation, preventive seizure, preservation of evidence, right to information