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Trade secrets and post-contractual non-compete clauses (restrictive covenants) are intrinsically linked issues when analysed in the context of past and present employment. While trade secrets have been the object of legislation in a number of major jurisdictions during the last couple of years, post-employment restrictive covenants have been left out of such legislative activity. Still, they have come under increasing scrutiny of economists and may well come into legislative focus in the near future.

As the chapters of this book highlight in detail, the approach to the protection of trade secrets, the conditions under which an employer can protect trade secrets and other business interests by way of a restrictive covenant, and the scope within which former employees by using the skills and knowledge can compete with a former employer, hugely differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This is not only so for the effective scope, but also for the underlying doctrinal reasons, making a country-by-country comparison difficult, and a common structure of the chapters a challenge. After all, the topic involves international law (Paris Convention, TRIPS), domestic labour law, domestic sui generis protection, and, most importantly, domestic competition and unfair competition law, a field that up to now has defied all attempts of harmonisation beyond those categories as identified by Friedrich Zoll and implemented as Art. 10bis in the Paris Convention.

This book features both comparative and country-specific chapters. The latter cover the major jurisdictions of Europe and Asia, while the former provide a subject-matter analysis by taking into account legislation and case law in a global context.

Anselm Kamperman Sanders (1968) is Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Director of the Advanced Masters Intellectual Property Law and Knowledge Management (IPKM LL.M/MSc), and Academic Director of the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR) at Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

He acts as Academic Co-director of the Annual Intellectual Property Law School and IP Seminar of the Institute for European Studies of Macau (IEEM), Macau SAR, China and is Adjunct Professor at Jinan University Law School, Guangzhou, China.

Anselm holds a Ph.D. from the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary, University of London, where he worked as a Marie Curie Fellow before joining Maastricht University in 1995. He is a member of the European Commission expert group on development and implications of patent law in the field of biotechnology and genetic engineering.

He can be reached by e-mail at a.kampermansanders@maastrichtuniversity.nl.

Christopher Heath (1964) studied at the Universities of Konstanz, Edinburgh and the LSE. He lived and worked in Japan for three years, and between 1992 and 2005 headed the Asian Department of the Max Planck Institute for Patent, Copyright and Competition Law in Munich. Christopher Heath, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Japanese unfair competition prevention law, is a Member of the Boards of Appeal at the European Patent Office in Munich and co-editor of IIC.

He can be reached by e-mail at blitzblitzblau@web.de.