Confidential information

Technical or commercial information meant confidential information which was technical or commercial in character. In order to be protected in law, and to be characterised as intellectual property, information had to be confidential or had to have the necessary quality of confidence about it. As a matter of ordinary language, “commercial information” meant information which was commercial in character, rather than information which, whatever its nature, might have had a value to someone. While the prevailing current view was that confidential information was not strictly property, it was not inappropriate to include it as an aspect of intellectual property.

Accordingly, unless there was binding authority to the contrary, given the normal meaning of “commercial information”, the draftsman of s 72 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 had intended that confidential information of a commercial nature would be included within the definition of intellectual property. As a matter of both principle and practice,