Confidential information

The law of confidentiality is often the best way of protecting trade secrets and valuable know-how where these are not otherwise adequately protected by other means (eg via intellectual property rights), or where using other types of protection is unattractive for commercial reasons.

Even if other types of rights exist (eg patent rights in the case of patented inventions), often the real value of an invention or new piece of technology does not lie just in the invention itself, but also in the associated know-how, training and guidance required to fully exploit it. Therefore, the law of confidentiality also helps to protect valuable information associated with (for instance) an invention, along with financial, customer and similar confidential information that a business holds.

Examples of items which might be considered confidential within a business include:

  1. commercial records such as price lists, customer lists, details of customers, suppliers, business partners and relationships with regulators or other third parties

  2. unpublished copyright works

  3. mathematical formulae and manufacturing techniques, processes, designs, drawings and engineering

  4. secure codes and algorithms

  5. personal employee information such as compensation arrangements, benefits, hours or work etc

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Life Sciences weekly highlights—10 July 2025

This week's edition of Life Sciences weekly highlights includes news that the Commission launched a new strategy to make Europe a global leader in life sciences by 2030, the government has published its 10 Year Health Plan for England, with ambitions to accelerate clinical trials, increase research access, and improve NHS sustainability, and key life sciences bodies have responded to the plan, including the Health Research Authority, which has also launched a new three-year strategy to support the government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England. Also included, is news that the EMA published its third annual report on its Real-World Evidence framework, covering February 2024–February 2025, the MHRA launched a consultation on the International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) E21 guideline regarding the inclusion of pregnant and breastfeeding individuals in clinical trials, the Commission adopted Implementing Decision (EU) 2025/1324, amending the 2019 framework regarding medical device expert panel rules and establishing a new expert panel for paediatrics and rare diseases, as well as news that the EFPIA published a position paper responding to the EU Critical Medicines Act, the DHSC announced plans for new legislation requiring healthcare providers to contribute to a single patient record system, and the ASA has found an Instagram post promoting weight loss medication in breach of the CAP Code for promoting prescription-only medicines (POMs) to the public, in a ruling that forms part of a wider body of work on POMs used for weight loss, among other stories.

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