The Canadian Digital Privacy Act (the “dPrivacy Act"), or originally Bill S-4, has been floating in purgatory for a number of years. The dPrivacy Act was originally generated as a result of the statutorily mandated five year review of the Canadian federal private sector act – the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA") – in 2006, and amends PIPEDA (SC 2000, c 5 [PIPEDA]). Various political factors stalled its adoption, but the dPrivacy Act finally received Royal Assent on 18 June 2015. This article examines the new and potentially problematic Breach Notification provisions (I.) and then briefly outlines the most significant other elements of the dPrivacy Act, both “good" and “bad" (II.) with a view, where applicable, to the equivalent provisions in the United States and, as an example of notification requirements in the EU, under the United Kingdom Data Protection Act (the “DPA").

The significant data breaches at the retail company Target and the adultery website Ashley Madison are prime examples of the threats which organisations and individuals worldwide have to deal with nowadays. In anticipation of the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a general notification duty for all data controllers will enter into force in the Netherlands as of 1 January 2016. In this article we will examine this new notification duty and look at the role of cyber insurance in this regard.

The article addresses essential questions of trade secret protection in the context of the current Directive Proposal pending European Parliament plenum discussion. Following an introduction to the most important provisions of the Directive Proposal (I.), the author proceeds to discuss the relationship of trade secret protection to intellectual property rights (II.) and the similarities in the respective legal regimes (III.). Subsequently the focus is set on the peculiarities of trade secrets (IV.) and the limits they pose for intensifying the legal protection (V.). The author further warns of trends to water down trade secret protection by ambiguous exemptions from the protection (VI.) and summarizes the challenges the European legislator is facing (VII.).