Recently, the second instance of Hangzhou intermediate people's court in Zhejiang Province concluded a dispute case of infringement of trade secrets in which employees embezzled the background data of the live broadcast platform to "brush awards" for cash out. The court applied the principle of punitive damages and ordered the defendant to compensate the platform company for 3million yuan, providing a judicial sample for the protection of data rights and interests in the live broadcasting industry. The plaintiff hi dog company operates a live broadcast platform. The network anchor can carry out entertainment interaction with users on the platform. Users can reward the anchor with gifts by recharging and get several times of rebate at random. The defendant Wang once served as the operation director of a platform under the plaintiff's company and signed a confidentiality agreement with the plaintiff. The plaintiff claimed that during his tenure, the defendant Wang used his high-authority account to log in, view and analyze the background data, master the time point with high winning rate, and "swipe" the prize by associating multiple accounts. Even after leaving and merging into other companies in the same industry, he continued to carry out the above behaviors by borrowing the original colleague's account, making a total profit of more than 2 million yuan. The plaintiff claimed that Wang's above-mentioned acts infringed on his trade secrets and demanded punitive damages of 3.9 million yuan. Hangzhou Railway Transportation Court of first instance found that Wang constituted an infringement of trade secrets and applied punitive damages to order him to compensate 3 million yuan. Wang filed an appeal. The second instance of Hangzhou intermediate people's court held that the background real-time data advocated by hi dog company constituted a trade secret. Wang's behavior deprives other users of the chance of winning the prize by normal reward, which may cause the loss of users and the decrease of viscosity, destroy the authenticity of the real-time data of the prize winning of the background gift, interfere with the business decision of hi dog company, and damage the competitive advantage formed by the trade secret of hi dog company. The court dismissed the appeal and upheld the original judgment. Hangzhou intermediate people's court believes that the live broadcast platform is an entertainment social platform, and its background data not only directly reflects the business income of enterprises, but also reflects the interaction scenes at different times, which can be used by enterprises to analyze the operation effect and user portrait, so as to adjust the platform business strategy, improve the user flow and viscosity, obtain stable, sustainable and growing business income, and bring competitive advantages to them. Such data is generally stored in the background system. Enterprises often take a series of measures to keep their background data confidential, such as signing confidentiality agreements with employees, setting data viewing permissions for employees with different responsibilities, and canceling the accounts of resigned employees. At this time, the data meets the requirements of confidentiality, confidentiality and business value, and the enterprise can claim to protect it as a business secret. If an employee uses the above data in violation of the confidentiality agreement during his employment, it belongs to the infringement of trade secret with proper source but improper use. If an employee obtains and uses the above data in violation of rules after leaving, it belongs to the infringement of trade secret with improper source and improper use. The infringement of trade secrets by employees or resigned employees is very easy to constitute subjective intent due to knowingly committing the infringement. If there are serious circumstances such as bad means of infringement, long duration, large damage and large profits, punitive damages can be applied to increase the liability for tort compensation. (reporter Zou Tiran) (outlook new era)