– Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, effective since January 1, 2008, amended as of June 13, 2023.
– Federal Law "On Commercial Secrets" N 98 of July 29, 2004.

– Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, Stockholm Act, since July 1, 1965.
– WTO's TRIPS Agreement, since August 22, 2012.

Definition: the Civil Code defines trade secret or "know-how" as information of any nature (production, technological, economic, organizational, and others) about the results of intellectual activities in the area of science and technology and about the methods of carrying out professional activities that has a real or potential commercial value due to it being unknown to third parties, which is not freely accessible to third parties on legal grounds, and the holder of such information takes reasonable measures aimed at keeping it confidential, in particular by way of introducing a commercial secret regime.

Assignment - licensing: possible. The right holder may alienate the know-how on the agreement on the alienation of the exclusive right, and may assign a right to use the know-how within the scope established by the license agreement.

Remedies for misappropriation: according to the Civil Code, the right holder as a remedy may use only compensation for losses caused by the violation of the exclusive right to a know-how unless other remedies are provided by law or contract with the infringer.

Comments: despite the advantages of the know-how regime, such as the lack of requirements of novelty, patentability, registration as well as the ability to freely determine what is included in the scope of legal protection and measures to use to ensure confidentiality, the know-how regime has significant disadvantages. Some of them are related to the possibility of a loss of exclusivity and uniqueness of the exclusive right, and sometimes its value. Firstly, a person or a company who in good faith and independently of other holders of know-how has become the owner of information constituting the content of know-how, acquires an independent exclusive right to that know-how. Secondly, a person or a company who has used know-how but did not know and could not know that the use thereof was illegal, for instance after having received access to the know-how incidentally or by mistake, is not liable for the breach of an exclusive right.