Product Liabilities Cases. Confidential Business Information - Essay Example

Though product liability is a valid legal requirement, the Supreme Court pushed the limits too high that many manufactures have shied away from the market. The Supreme Court denied the fact that in some cases, though a supplier may be certain of the functionality of a product, systems may go haywire lidding to unforeseen damages or fatalities. Though consumer activists explain that such products liability suits would make manufactures more responsible on the threat of product liability, the fact is that such suits are hurting the manufacturing sector and preventing thousands of innovations from getting into the market (Andre & Velasquez, 2010).

Increased product liabilities cases lead to increased cost of goods to the consumer, which implies that the cost of the litigations outweigh their benefits to the society. Andre & Velasquez (2010) explains that the high cost of litigations in many companies, making up to 60% of litigation expenses is making cost of doing business to increase substantially; as the cost of liability suits increases, the company passes the increased burden to customers in terms of high product processes. Therefore, such litigations by a few will hurt many customers in terms of increased prices.

In some extreme cases, companies have been forced to scale dozen their operations due to the high costs of such litigations. This results to thousands of job losses. For example, a Conference Board report recently revealed that 15% of companies were forced to undertake massive downsizing, while another 8% were forced to close down plants due to such litigations (Andre & Velasquez, 2010). In addition to losing jobs, such a move hurts the economy as productivity and investments are forced to close as a result of litigations.

Moreover, more companies with ingenious products fear introducing such products in the company. The above report revealed that up to 39% of companies delayed introducing new products in the market due to fear of litigations. In fact, withe such litigations, vaccines to some diseases such as AIDS may never be realized as manufacturers shy away from the market due to such litigations. This hurts the overall economy and society in general. DQ 2 Every business has to abide to some legal agreements that are protected under the law.

In order to act ethically, a business has to ensure that all information held about their clients is confidential and is not to be disclosed to any other party under any case, unless a court of law orders such information to be presented. According to British Law (2012) a confidentiality agreement or any non-disclosure agreement is a legally binding contract, with owner of the information disclosing such information to a third party; the third party is legally required to keep such information confidential and not disclose such information to any other party.

According to IPR Help Desk (2012), trade secrets are any confidential information held by a business, which makes a business to achieve an economic benefit that translates to competitive advantage. Such a secret is largely unknown to competitors due to the strategic efforts by the holder of such information to keep it a secret. Client contacts give a business a competitive advantage over its competitors in that a business with more clients will have more profitability and performance compared to others, which is form of competitive advantage.

Customer emails are part of customer information that has to be confidential and