Trade secret protection is a legal issue crossing employment law, tort liability law, and intellectual property law, and non-competition is a controversial issue in the judicial practice, and the rules and case from the Supreme Court have been changing in recent years. Both of them are difficult issues in employment law.

The question and answer articles in this chapter answer the questions about the identification of trade secrets, proving non-publicity of trade secrets, the infringement of trade secrets, the contradictory judicial decisions in the accountability of employees for “customers poaching”, the immunities for trade secret infringement, the types of right holders and tortfeasors in trade secret cases, the civil, administrative, and criminal liabilities for infringement of trade secrets, the definition of non-competition and liabilities for breach of non-competition contract, the scope of obligators of non-competition, non-competition obligation of current employees, liability of breach if no non-competition allowance is stipulated, cancellation of the non-competition agreement, and the treatment of excessive non-competition liquidated damages.

A prominent feature of this chapter is that we point out the contradictions and shortcomings existing in the current legal rules and the judicial practice in China, and analyze in depth the allocation of burden of proof in the elements of non-publicity of trade secrets, the allocation of burden of proof in the proof of infringement and the determination of whether the act of poaching customers constitutes infringement. In particular, this chapter, based on analyses of the practical aspects of trade secrets, elevates to proposing improvements to the civil burden of proof rules in China by incorporating the concepts of balance of probability and the burden of proof shifting. It also compares the trade secret and non-compete system under common law, offering suggestions for enhancing the corresponding regulatory framework in China.