Employees, Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants in Germany

Employees, Trade Secrets and Restrictive Covenants in Germany
Christopher Heath

ISBN 978-90-411-8379-8
Kluwer Law International BV, The Netherlands

History is not short of high-proile cases of trade secrets, their development, use and misappropriation by employees. Two notable incidents from Germany deserve mention. Back in 1707, a certain Mr. Böttger, a self-proclaimed alchemist, had announced that he could turn clay into gold and was thereupon contracted by the Saxonian King Augustus the Strong. Mr. Böttger was well-paid, but kept as a prisoner of the king who demanded to see results. By experimenting with various kinds of clay, in 1708 he (and in fact a team of others) came up with the recipe for porcelain, hitherto exclusively imported from China (“bone china”, for that reason) and with ingredients
unknown. In order to keep the recipe secret, King August kept Böttger and his team under lock and key, yet one of the conoscenti, Stölzel, escaped and in 1718 founded the porcelain factory in Vienna.