Every company has trade secrets—and they’re being stolen.

Introduction

Trade secrets are confidential business information that provides a competitive advantage, is not generally known, and is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy. Your company has them - fact. Every company has them.

It’s also a fact that they are being stolen. To the tune of £66 billion annually in the UK and $600 billion in the US.

This week saw a particularly shocking case: a UK venture capital firm was found to have stolen trade secrets from a startup that pitched them for investment. This isn’t just unethical—it’s illegal under multiple legal frameworks worldwide, including the UK, US, EU, and China. The judge found for the company and awarded damages (thanks to Intanify friend and Partner John Pryor for highlighting this one). Just to be clear, it is extremely rare for a VC to do this, which serves to highlight anyone could be stealing your secrets.

Despite these facts, few companies take full advantage of the free and robust protections available under the law. Trade secrets are often an afterthought in IP strategy, if there is one. A balanced approach across all intellectual property is optimal—each complements the other.

At Intanify, working with our users, we’ve seen firsthand how underutilised trade secret protections are and why that needs to change.

A quick primer on trade secrets

What are trade secrets?

A trade secret can be any confidential information that provides a commercial advantage. Importantly they are both technical AND commercial. Indeed most litigation is from commercial secrets, often customer lists.

• Technical – for example proprietary algorithms, unique datasets, or custom AI model optimisations.

• Commercial – such as pricing strategies, customer lists, supply chain data, and market insights.

How are they stolen?

Forget cyberattacks—80-90% of trade secret theft happens through people, not hacking. Employees, ex-employees, partners, and even investors (as we saw this week) are the primary sources of leakage. Very often good people doing bad without bad intentions, though also bad people doing bad because they can get away with it.

Trade secrets are your moat

By definition, trade secrets underpin your competitive advantage, which is your moat. They can protect all kinds of assets – from processes to data to code. They also buttress other rights – for example adding to the power of a patent.

Legal protection exists—but you must take steps

Trade secrets are protected under the UK Trade Secrets (Enforcement, etc.) Regulations 2018, the US Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), the EU Trade Secrets Directive, and similar laws in many jurisdictions, including China. But here’s the catch: they are only enforceable if you can prove you took reasonable measures to protect them.

What we’ve learned from Intanify’s users

At Intanify, our Discover product helps companies identify all of their missing intangible assets and recommend best practices—much like an IP audit by a professional would. Indeed Intanift supports as part of the UK IPO’s IP Advance audit scheme. We’ve seen a clear pattern across every company:

• Every one of our users had trade secrets identified. Whether they are deep tech, AI, or more SaaS, confidential information plays a crucial role in their competitive advantage.

• Almost no company has a trade secret register. Despite recognising the importance of their proprietary knowledge through the questions, almost no company had a resgister of them.

• The single biggest reason companies subscribe to Intanify long term? To track their trade secrets. In a completely objective Discovery report, trade secrets consistently rank as the action which has the most resonance with our users.

Common trade secrets we see across companies:

• Algorithms and unique datasets, including AI training data

• Pricing strategies and frameworks

• User insights and behavioural analytics

• Customer lists and supply chain relationships

• Custom AI frameworks and model optimisations

How to protect your trade secrets

The steps are beyond the scope of this article, but Step 1 is simple: identify your trade secrets and create a register.

Intanify’s Discover process identifies the majority of your trade secrets, and the missing ones become immediately clear—allowing you to complete the picture.

From there, you need to take reasonable measures to protect them. The good news? You’re probably already doing many of these things, such as implementing strong digital security. The bad news? You’re almost certainly not doing all of them.

Conclusion

Trade secrets aren’t just for Fortune 500 companies or deep-tech startups. Every business has them. And every business is at risk of losing them—whether to competitors, ex-employees, or even investors.

This week’s case of a VC stealing trade secrets is just one example of why every company needs to take their protection seriously.

Most of the necessary steps are free, and the legal protections are robust. The only question is: are you using them?

Step 1 is building a trade secret register. Intanify can get you going.