323 Semester journal of the IEEE Review within the sphere of their technical and commercial activity, to hold in secret informa-tion received from their clients or patients. The regulatory judicial framework regard-ing this material embraces a great number of rules, and the rights of intellectual and industrial property have as their object the protection of non-material goods created or produced by physical or judicial persons which may be the object of industrial and commercial exploitation. The commercial secret has been the object of recent regulation through Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and the Council dated 8 June 2016, rel-ative to the protection of un-divulged technical knowledge and company informa-tion (commercial secrets) against their illicit acquisition, utilization and revelation. According to Consideration 2 of the said Directive: “Companies, whatever their size, value commercial secrets as much as patents or other rights of intellectual property. They use confidentiality as a management tool for the competitiveness of the company and of innovation in research, to protect information of a wide range of types not limited to tech-nical knowledge, but rather including commercial data such as information on clients and suppliers, commercial plans and market strategy studies”. Taking into account the fore-going, Article 2 of the said Directive establishes that there shall be understood as: “1) “commercial secret”: information complying with all of the following requisites: a) being secret in the sense of not being, in its totality or in the configuration and precise assembly of its components, generally known by persons belonging to the circles in which the type of information in question is normally used, nor easily accessible by them; b) holding com-mercial value due to their secret nature; c) having been the object of reasonable measures, in the circumstances of the case, to maintain it secret, taken by the person who legitimately exercises its control”. Article 20.1.d) of the Spanish Constitution addresses the professional secret in that “(…) The law shall regulate the right to a clause of conscience and to the professional secret in the exercise of these liberties. Deriving from the said guarantees, intellectual property is found to be regulated in Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996, dated 12 April, through which is approved the Revised Text of Law of Intellectual Property. For its part, in-dustrial property is covered in several laws: Law 224/2015, dated 24 July, on Patents; Law 17/2001, dated 7 December, on Trademarks; and Law 20/2003, dated 7 July, on Judicial Protection of Industrial Design. The author maintains that “the protected judicial interest in the cases both of the pro-fessional secret and of intellectual and industrial property is an interest of private charac-ter. The professional secret protects the confidentiality of information obtained by certain professionals by reason of their posts or by certain companies within the sphere of their technical and commercial activity”. In addition, it is noted that “The rights of industrial and intellectual property have as their object the protection of immaterial goods created or produced by physical or judicial persons which may be the object of industrial and com-mercial exploitation”. It is stated in conclusion that the essential element for the determination of access to information classified as “confidential” shall be “to prove its confidential or secret char-acter and allege the interest which may be prejudiced if such information were released”. Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos n.º 13 - Año: 2019 - Págs.: 307 a 328
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