New Aim is a very real ecommerce story. The thing at stake was not just a spreadsheet called confidential information. It was hard-won supplier knowledge: which overseas suppliers were reliable, which products suited the Australian market, who to contact, and how quickly a competitor could get moving if it skipped that sourcing work.
The Full Court accepted that information about the 17 specific suppliers had commercial value and could be confidential. New Aim had evidence about supplier selection, testing, quality control, white-labelling and restricted employee access. The Court also found Mr Leung breached his employment contract and improperly used information under section 183 of the Corporations Act.
The practical lesson is that confidentiality is operational. If a business wants to protect supplier lists, customer lists, pricing data, product photos or sourcing methods, it should limit access, define the information in contracts, log exports and offboarding, and move quickly when suspicious competitor activity appears.