Safeguarding Intellectual Property, Trade Secrets, and Confidential Information
Our intellectual property is one of our organization’s most valuable assets and includes patents, trademarks and service marks, trade secrets, and other kinds of confidential information. To safeguard intellectual property, you should:
- Be aware of the rules involving intellectual property that pertain to your job role. For example, if you communicate about our products or services, you should know the correct way to use trademarks, service marks, and copyrights.
- Respect the intellectual property rights of others, such as valid patents and copyrighted material. Failing to do so could lead to civil and criminal penalties.
- Take precautions when hiring new people, especially those who have worked for competitors, to ensure they do not divulge or use the intellectual property or confidential information of a former employer.
Confidential Information
Confidential information includes customer and employee data, private, personally identifiable information like names and addresses, information about current or future products or services, trade secrets, business plans, earnings, and other financial data and any other type of information that’s considered sensitive and is not available in the public domain.
Trade secrets are a special class of confidential information that gives an organization a competitive advantage over others.
The loss, theft, or misuse of confidential information could seriously harm our organization, and could lead to civil and criminal penalties for our organization and individuals. You are responsible for protecting all confidential information under your control and following all procedures for protecting it, including the following guidelines:
- Take precautions to avoid inadvertent disclosures by:
- Only accessing and sharing confidential information when there is a legitimate business need to know.
- Refraining from divulging confidential information to anyone not specifically authorized to receive it, including coworkers, family members, and friends.
- Never discussing confidential information when you could be overheard by an unauthorized person or in any public places, blogs, social media sites, or any other public forums.
- Asking your supervisor if you are unsure whether certain information is confidential or not.
- Protecting all confidential information in digital format per our information security policy.
- Only releasing confidential information to third parties when you have management approval and you are sure the receiving party can adequately protect it and is contractually obligated to do so.
- If you leave our organization, you are still under the same non-disclosure obligation to keep our information secret.
- Never throw documents or other media containing confidential information in the trash. Instead, follow our data destruction policies by destroying confidential information through approved methods.
- Public statements are only issued by our corporate communications department. If you are ever asked to comment on company policies, announcements, or anything else, refer the question to our corporate communications department.
- If you are aware of circumstances that could lead to the loss of confidential information or of any actual loss, you should report it immediately to your supervisor.
For further details, please consult the Code or contact your supervisor. Click the Continue button to advance to the next slide.