Modern Jurisprudence and Law

Modern Jurisprudence and Law

Evaluating the effectiveness of the trade secret protection system in employment relations with a focus on employees' confidentiality obligations after termination of the employment contract

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 University of Tehran
2 Justice University
10.22034/jml.2026.2096636.1752
Abstract
In the analysis of post-employment conflict of interest, the termination of the employment relationship is always the beginning of new legal challenges between the employer and the employee. The main issue of the present study is that with the termination of the employment relationship, a profound conflict of interest arises between the employee's right to work and freedom of employment on the one hand, and the employer's proprietary right to protect confidential information and trade secrets on the other. This conflict is intensified when the employer seeks to extend confidentiality obligations to the period after the termination of the contract in order to prevent the transfer of proprietary knowledge of the firm to competitors, while the workforce needs to use the skills and experiences acquired to make a living. Accordingly, the present article seeks to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of the rules of Iranian law in regulating this fundamental conflict and compare it with the approaches adopted in leading legal systems. The present study is organized with a descriptive-analytical and comparative method and, by analyzing laws, doctrine and judicial practice, reaches the following general conclusion that although the Iranian legal system has the capacity to identify the principle of protecti conditions, the guarantee of preventive and immediate executions such as temporary injunctions, as well as the technical criteria for separating the personal skills of the worker from the employer's trade secrets in Iranian law are faced with severe ambiguity and dispersion; which reveals the necessity of legislative review and the provision of criteria for judicial interpretation inspired by comparative models.
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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 07 August 2026