Entrepreneurship and Small Business (ESB) Certification 2026 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

Trade secret licensing does not require registration with the government to be enforceable or valid. Unlike patents or trademarks, which necessitate formal registration processes, trade secrets rely on the confidentiality of the information and the efforts made to maintain its secrecy. The protection of trade secrets is established through legal frameworks such as the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act in the United States, which focus on the misappropriation of trade secrets rather than registration.

This means that as long as the information qualifies as a trade secret—being valuable, secret, and subject to reasonable measures to maintain its confidentiality—license agreements can be created without needing to involve government entities. Hence, the idea that trade secret licensing must be registered is fundamentally incorrect, as the protection of trade secrets is inherently based on maintaining secrecy and not on any formal registration system.