EU trade secrets law: key litigation trends shaping 2025
Trade secrets litigation across the European Union is accelerating sharply, driven by a wave of corporate disputes, evolving national court interpretations, and growing pressure on Brussels to sharpen the teeth of its 2016 Trade Secrets Directive. Companies are no longer treating intellectual property theft as a back-office compliance concern. It’s now boardroom-level crisis management.
Directive under pressure
The EU Trade Secrets Directive was transposed into national law by member states back in 2018, but enforcement has been anything but uniform. Germany and France have emerged as the most active jurisdictions for trade secrets claims, accounting for roughly 60% of reported cases in the bloc between 2020 and 2024. Courts in Poland and the Netherlands are catching up fast. Yet smaller member states still lack specialist IP courts capable of handling technically complex disputes, creating a two-speed system that frustrates multinationals trying to protect sensitive commercial information across borders.
A senior official at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market recently stated: “We are closely monitoring how national courts apply the directive’s provisions, particularly around the definition of reasonable steps to keep information confidential — that threshold is being interpreted very differently across the bloc.”
What companies are actually fighting over
The disputes themselves have shifted. Early cases focused heavily on departing employees taking client lists or manufacturing processes to rivals. That pattern hasn’t disappeared, but it’s now competing with a newer category: algorithmic and data-driven trade secrets. Businesses are increasingly seeking protection for training datasets, pricing models, and proprietary AI outputs. Courts haven’t fully caught up. And the law, written before generative AI became mainstream, doesn’t cleanly address whether a machine-generated process can even qualify for trade secrets protection under the directive’s current language.
The average value of claims filed in German courts alone exceeded €4.2 million per case in 2023, according to analysis by IP litigation specialists — up from €2.8 million in 2019.
Policy moves to watch
Brussels is weighing targeted amendments rather than a full overhaul. Key areas under discussion include clearer rules on cross-border discovery, stronger interim injunction standards, and potentially a dedicated fast-track mechanism for trade secrets cases involving critical technology sectors. The semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries have been lobbying hard for the latter. So has the automotive sector, which is dealing with an uptick in disputes tied to electric vehicle battery chemistry and software-defined vehicle architectures.
Still, any legislative revision faces a crowded regulatory calendar and political headwinds from member states resistant to further harmonization of civil procedure rules.
What comes next
Expect 2025 to bring at least two significant referrals to the Court of Justice of the EU on definitional questions the directive left ambiguous. Companies operating in the single market should audit their confidentiality protocols now — courts are scrutinizing what “reasonable steps” actually looks like in practice, and the bar is rising. Those that can’t demonstrate systematic protection measures may find their claims dismissed before they even reach the merits.
