The law of trade secrets is one of the most important and fastest developing areas of intellectual property, but is by far the least harmonised internationally. Indeed, the protection of trade secrets was not mandated by any international treaty until the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which nonetheless left countries with significant latitude as to how they should implement such obligations. Since the last edition the EU Trade Secrets Directive has had the effect of establishing minimum levels of protection in the Member States of the EEA, but major differences of approach still remain, and the Directive has neither achieved total harmonisation under the civil law nor had any effect on the protection of trade secrets by means of the criminal law. The wide variety of approaches to the protection of trade secrets internationally betrays the murky legal origins of such protection. Are they protected by civil actions, in the criminal courts, or
