Trade Secret Litigation in Taiwan: Injunctions, Evidence and Damages

Taiwan's Trade Secrets Act allows an injured party to seek an order stopping an infringement or preventing a threatened one. A damages claim is available separately for unlawful infringement committed intentionally or negligently. Neither civil provision makes a criminal conviction a prerequisite. Trade Secrets Act, Articles 11 and 12.

For a U.S. semiconductor company, stopping further use, securing a copy of evidence and controlling who can read that evidence require different court requests. The distinction affects what an engineering team must explain, which records counsel needs and how narrowly the requested order can be framed. In a hypothetical supplier dispute, a demand to stop using a particular process file requires a different justification from a request to preserve the server logs showing who downloaded it.

This discussion uses the statutory texts checked on October 4, 2026 (KST). The Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act was substantially amended on February 15, 2023, with the amendments taking effect on August 30, 2023. Its Article 75 generally preserves the former rules for civil cases already pending before implementation, with agreement-based exceptions for specified provisions. The procedures below concern a new filing.

The claimant must connect a defined secret to its rights

Under Article 2 of the Trade Secrets Act, information must satisfy three conditions: it is not generally known among people dealing with that type of information; its secrecy gives it actual or potential economic value; and its owner has taken reasonable secrecy measures. A confidentiality stamp alone does not establish all three.

For a semiconductor supplier, a useful preparation exercise is to identify the disputed file version, the technical content claimed as secret, its business value and the controls that existed when access occurred. A process engineer can explain which settings are publicly documented and which reflect proprietary development. IT records can show who could access the relevant repository. These are suggested ways to organize proof, not a statutory document checklist.

The corporate structure needs the same precision. Article 3 generally assigns secrets developed by employees in their work to the employer, unless the contract provides otherwise. Under Article 4, commissioned research follows the ownership agreement; without one, ownership belongs to the commissioned party, although the funder may use the secret in its business. Paying for development does not invariably establish ownership.

That distinction can matter when a U.S. parent pays a Taiwan supplier while a different group entity employs the engineers. Counsel needs the development agreement and chain of rights, not merely a group organization chart. Article 13-5 expressly permits even an unrecognized foreign juridical person to bring a civil action under the Act; Article 15 separately addresses reciprocal protection for foreign nationals. These provisions do not eliminate the need to establish the particular claimant's rights.

The alleged conduct also needs definition. Article 10 covers specified forms of improper acquisition, use and disclosure, including misuse of information originally acquired through a legal transaction. The analysis should distinguish access authorized for a supplier's work from an alleged use outside that authorization.

Interim relief requires evidence of necessity

Article 11 provides the substantive claim to stop or prevent infringement. In conjunction with that claim, the injured party may request destruction or other necessary disposal of things made through the infringement or used exclusively for it. This is not authority for the claimant to enter a supplier's premises and erase files itself.

An order operating while the merits are unresolved requires a procedural application. For IP disputes, a temporary status disposition, known as 定暫時狀態之處分, is governed by Article 52 of the Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act. The applicant must make a preliminary evidentiary showing of the disputed legal relationship and the need to prevent substantial harm, avert imminent danger or address a comparable situation. An insufficient showing requires dismissal; security cannot cure that deficiency.

The court may require security even on a sufficient showing. It normally must allow the parties to comment before granting relief. An exception permits proceeding without advance notice where the applicant supplies solid evidence of special circumstances and the court considers that appropriate.

Within 14 days after service of the disposition, the applicant must provide the court with proof of having filed suit or risk revocation, on request or the court's initiative. Article 52 also requires compensation for damage caused by the disposition if it is revoked for specified reasons, including impropriety from the outset, failure to provide that filing proof, the applicant's request or a final merits defeat.

As a drafting matter, an application should connect the requested restriction to an identified risk: which information could be used, by whom, in what activity, and why waiting for judgment would cause the harm alleged. A general concern about a competitor's capabilities leaves those questions unanswered. Technical staff should also explain how the proposed restriction would work without sweeping unrelated material into the dispute.

Under Article 9, the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court generally has exclusive jurisdiction over the specified first-instance IP civil cases, subject to the article's exceptions. Article 51 directs a pre-suit interim application to the court where the action should be brought, and a later application to the court hearing it. Article 10 generally requires lawyer representation for first-instance trade secret litigation, pre-suit evidence preservation and interim proceedings, subject to its stated exceptions.

Evidence preservation needs a defined target

A court order stopping use does not by itself preserve the records needed to prove that use. Article 368 of the Code of Civil Procedure permits evidence preservation where evidence risks loss or difficulty of later use, or the other side consents. It also permits specified measures to establish the existing condition of facts or objects when there is a legal interest and necessity. That second route does not require the same risk of imminent disappearance.

Under Article 370, the application must identify the other party, or explain why it cannot; specify the evidence and the facts it would prove; and state the preservation grounds. The required reasons must be supported by a preliminary showing.

For IP cases, Article 46 of the Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act supplies a special venue rule: apply to the court where the suit should be filed, or where it is already pending. It authorizes measures including inspection, expert examination, preservation of documents and questioning of witnesses. The court may restrict attendance and access to preserved material where another party's trade secrets are at risk. A preservation request therefore needs a proposed scope and a way to protect unrelated confidential material.

The limits are visible in a published ruling outside the chip industry. In a used-car inspection dispute, the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court rejected a preservation request after finding insufficient support for the claimed secrets and the need for preservation. A general assertion that the opponent held the evidence and could change it did not establish urgency. The court also examined alternative ways to obtain the records during litigation. This was a ruling on the application, not a final determination of the underlying infringement dispute. 113年度民聲字第31號, July 31, 2024.

There is also a court-appointed inspection mechanism. Article 19, extended to trade secret infringement by Article 27, allows an inspector to examine documents or equipment held or managed by the other side or a third party. The application must explain, among other matters, why the evidence cannot be obtained independently or by other means, identify its location and explain the proposed method and necessity. The court considers proportionality and hears the affected parties before ordering inspection. A U.S. litigation team should plan around these specific Taiwan mechanisms rather than assume that a broad document demand creates a right to inspect an entire facility.

Confidentiality protection follows the material and its recipients

Technical evidence can expose the information the suit seeks to protect. Taiwan's procedural rules offer several responses, each with a different function. Article 31 permits a closed hearing in the specified circumstances. Article 32 permits restrictions on reviewing or reproducing litigation materials involving trade secrets, provided the parties' ability to present their case is protected. The written request must identify its scope through codes or evidence names and numbers.

A confidentiality preservation order under Article 36 restricts use and disclosure by the people subject to it. The applicant must make the statutory showing that pleadings or evidence involve its trade secrets and that restricting disclosure or use is necessary to avoid harm to business activities based on those secrets. The provision contains an exception for a person who acquired or held the secret before the application through means other than reading the pleadings or examining evidence.

Article 37 requires the written application to identify the proposed recipients, protected secrets and supporting facts. Under Article 38, the order takes effect when served on its recipient. Once bound, that person cannot use the secret outside the litigation or disclose it to someone not covered by the order. A U.S. parent should therefore establish which engineers and advisers may receive protected material before circulating it through a group email thread.

A semiconductor-related example concerns Chunghwa Precision Test Tech. Co., Ltd. (中華精測科技股份有限公司, CHPT), whose official company history identifies its probe-card business. On September 24, 2025, the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court granted CHPT a confidentiality preservation order in 114年度民秘聲字第32號, arising from patent litigation. The materials concerned probe-manufacturing processes, methods and equipment; some had been obtained through evidence preservation.

The court found a sufficient preliminary showing for protection and restricted the named lawyers and patent attorneys from using the listed materials outside that litigation or disclosing them to unbound people. The ruling illustrates controlled access to technical evidence. It does not establish that CHPT or another company committed trade secret theft, and it does not decide the patent merits.

Damages depend on loss or the infringer's gain

Article 12 of the Trade Secrets Act imposes damages liability for intentional or negligent unlawful infringement and joint liability where several people jointly infringe. Its limitation rule is specific: the damages claim expires if unexercised for two years after the claimant knows the act and the person liable, or ten years after the act. A company should have those dates assessed separately from the criminal complaint timetable.

Article 13 offers alternative calculations. One follows Civil Code Article 216; where the injured party cannot prove its loss, the statutory fallback compares normally expected profits from using the secret with profits earned from using it after infringement. The other seeks the infringer's gains from the infringement. If the infringer cannot prove costs or necessary expenses, the revenue from that infringement is treated as the gain. The statute does not say that every dollar of the defendant's company-wide revenue is recoverable.

For intentional infringement, the court may, on the injured party's request and considering the circumstances, increase compensation up to three times the proven damages. That is a ceiling on the enhanced award, not an automatic multiplier or three additional awards on top of the base amount.

Civil Code Article 216 covers actual loss and lost profits, subject to other law or contractual provisions, and describes profits reasonably expected from ordinary circumstances or established plans and arrangements. For a semiconductor business, the resulting preparation task is to connect its financial model to the disputed information and conduct. Finance personnel should distinguish an actual lost order from a forecast, and explain the assumptions behind any estimated margin. Those records support a damages argument; research expenditure or a falling sales total alone is not the calculation specified in Article 13.

A criminal complaint has its own proof and timetable

Criminal liability under Article 13-1 requires the specified conduct and intent to obtain unlawful benefit for oneself or another, or harm the secret owner's interests. The civil damages provision also reaches negligent infringement. The elements therefore need separate analysis; suspicion sufficient to prompt an internal investigation is not itself proof of either claim.

Article 13-3 makes Article 13-1 offenses complaint-dependent. For complaint-dependent offenses, Article 237 of the Code of Criminal Procedure generally gives the person entitled to complain six months from learning the offender's identity. That trigger differs from Article 12's civil limitation rule. Identifying the alleged offense and recording when the relevant facts became known should occur early enough for counsel to assess both deadlines.

A criminal complaint does not itself award civil compensation. Articles 487 and 488 permit a person harmed by crime to bring an attached civil claim within the specified criminal proceedings. The filing window begins after prosecution and ends before the close of second-instance oral argument, with a bar between the close of first-instance argument and the filing of an appeal. That route is distinct from filing an independent civil action.

An independent civil case may also encounter a stay: Code of Civil Procedure Article 183 allows the court to suspend proceedings where suspected criminal conduct bears on its decision. It does not make every civil suit automatically wait for a criminal judgment.

Evidence obtained in the investigation has its own disclosure limits. Under Trade Secrets Act Article 14-1, a prosecutor may issue an investigation confidentiality protective order. Subject to the statutory prior-possession exception, recipients may not use the covered contents outside the investigation or disclose them to unbound people. A company cannot assume that material received through that process is available for unrestricted use in a civil filing or a U.S. proceeding. Counsel should establish the permitted route for using each item, while the company preserves originals and keeps factual records separate from untested accusations.

For a Taiwan-side assessment, a non-confidential outline can be sent to attorney Wei Tseng (曾雋崴), partner at Hovering International Law Firm (昊鼎國際法律事務所), at wei@hoveringlaw.com.tw. Technical files can follow after a suitable channel is agreed. Taipei office: 7F-2, No. 35, Sec. 1, Chengde Rd., Datong Dist., Taipei City 103, Taiwan.

More columns for semiconductor companies

Sources

Sources opened and checked on October 4, 2026 (KST). The Ministry of Justice database displayed a compilation cutoff of September 24, 2026; the statutory discussion is based on those published texts. Chinese statutory text controls over an English translation.

• Ministry of Justice, Trade Secrets Act, full text, amended January 15, 2020: Article 2, Article 3, Article 4, Article 10, Article 11, Article 12, Article 13, Article 13-1, Article 13-3, Article 13-5, Article 14-1 and Article 15.
• Ministry of Justice, Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act, amended February 15, 2023: Article 9, Article 10, Article 19, Article 27, Article 31, Article 32, Article 36, Article 37, Article 38, Article 46, Article 51, Article 52 and Article 75.
• Judicial Yuan, Notice of promulgation and August 30, 2023 implementation of the amended Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act, published February 22, 2023; updated March 2, 2023.
• Ministry of Justice, Code of Civil Procedure: Article 183, Article 368 and Article 370; Civil Code: Article 216.
• Ministry of Justice, Code of Criminal Procedure: Article 237, Article 487 and Article 488.
• Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, Civil ruling 113年度民聲字第31號, July 31, 2024, evidence preservation application; and civil ruling 114年度民秘聲字第32號, September 24, 2025, confidentiality preservation order in patent litigation.
• Chunghwa Precision Test Tech. Co., Ltd., Milestone, undated company history; used to confirm the English company name and semiconductor probe-card context, not litigation findings.

General information, not individualized legal advice. Sources checked October 4, 2026 (KST).