Summary

According to §50, Paragraph 6 of the Republic of Estonia Employment Contracts Act, an employee is obligated to maintain the employer’s business and production secrets, if this obligation is prescribed in the employment contract. This requirement is probably one of the more controversial employee obligations. Since no definition of business and production secrets has been provided, the mere determination of such information may generate problems. The standpoint that defining business and production secrets is indeed unnecessary is, in itself, not false because the definition (as a description or a list) should either be in the employment contract or the issue should be resolved in court practice. In reality, such court practice still does not exist. In a situation where there is no precise regulation, and no court practice, employers have essentially been given free reign in deciding which information should be declared confidential.

The obligation to maintain business and production secrets is also called a confidentiality obligation for the employee. Proceeding from this, the problem of determining business and production secrets has indeed been examined in this article more widely from the aspect of the obligation of confidentiality for the employee. There is an initial explanation of the nature of the confidentiality obligation for the employee, followed by an analysis of issues associated with the determination of confidential information. Since this topic has not risen in Estonian court practice, and also since there are very few theoretical analyses, the article uses examples from the cases of a number of other countries and from legal articles. Although the draft of the Employment Contracts Act has been currently withdrawn from the proceedings of the Riigikogu, there is also a brief comment on the regulations therein.