Two questions come up in every technology file in Montenegro, and the copyright statute answers only one of them. It says who owns a computer program. It does not protect an algorithm, a training pipeline, a pricing model, a customer list or a set of model weights — none of which is a "work" in the copyright sense, and one of which, on the face of the statute, may have no author at all.
There is a separate Act for that. It has been in force since the start of 2022, and it is rarely cited.
Article numbers below are from the Zakon o zaštiti poslovne tajne, "Službeni list CG" br. 145/21, read from the ministry-published text on 5 September 2026. Our copy carries the gazette number but not the publication date on its face; that issue of the gazette is dated 31 December 2021, and Article 19 puts the Act in force on the eighth day after publication. General information, not advice on a specific matter.
What it replaced, and what it does not do
Article 18 repealed the Zakon o zaštiti neobjavljenih podataka ("Službeni list CG" br. 16/07 and 73/08) on the day the new Act entered into force, and Article 17 left proceedings that were not yet final to be finished under the old Act. Anything drafted against the 2007 statute is drafted against a repealed one.
Article 1 sets a boundary that decides how these files are run: the Act regulates the civil-law protection of a trade secret against unlawful acquisition, use or disclosure. It is not a criminal statute and not an administrative licensing regime. Article 3 fills its gaps by reference to the civil procedure act, the law of obligations, and the enforcement and security legislation.
The definition has three limbs, and the third is the one companies fail
Article 2 defines a trade secret as information which:
- is not, as a body or in the precise configuration or assembly of its components, generally known or readily accessible to persons who use that kind of information in their line of work;
- has commercial value because it is secret; and
- in respect of which the person lawfully controlling it — the holder — has taken appropriate measures to keep it secret.
All three are required. The third is not evidence of the first two; it is a separate condition of protection. A company that never restricted access to the repository, never put confidentiality terms in its contractor agreements and never marked anything as confidential does not have a weak trade secret case in Montenegro. On the face of Article 2 it does not have a trade secret.
That has a drafting consequence worth acting on before any dispute arises. The "appropriate measures" are what you will have to prove, and Article 9(2) point 2 and Article 11(6) point 2 both make "the measures taken to protect the trade secret" an express factor the court weighs — once when deciding interim measures and again when deciding proportionality of the final remedies. The same fact is scored twice.
What the Act expressly allows
Article 4(1) lists lawful acquisition, and two entries matter to technology businesses.
Point 1 protects independent discovery or creation. Point 2 protects observation, study, disassembly or testing of a product that has been made available to the public, or that is lawfully in the possession of the person acquiring the information, where that person is under no valid legal obligation limiting acquisition. Reverse engineering of a publicly released product is, in principle, lawful acquisition — and the copyright statute reinforces that from its own side, where contractual restrictions on decompilation for interoperability are void, as we set out in the four clauses in your SaaS contract.
Point 3 covers the exercise of workers' or workers' representatives' rights to information and consultation in accordance with European Union law — and that point, together with Article 4(3) (acquisition required or permitted by EU law), is on the deferral list in Article 16.
Article 4(2) keeps acquisition, use or disclosure lawful where it is required or permitted by law, and Article 4(1) point 4 where it is in accordance with good business practice.
What is unlawful, and how far down the chain it reaches
Article 5(1) makes acquisition without the holder's consent unlawful where it was obtained by unauthorised access to, appropriation of, or copying of documents, objects, materials, substances or electronic files lawfully controlled by the holder and containing the secret or from which it can be derived — or where it was contrary to good business practice.
Article 5(2) makes use or disclosure unlawful where the person acquired the secret unlawfully, acts contrary to a confidentiality agreement, acts contrary to a contractual obligation governing use of the secret, or acts contrary to an obligation not to disclose. An NDA breach is therefore not only a contract claim; it is a statutory infringement with the statutory remedies attached.
Article 5(3) extends to infringing goods — producing, offering or marketing them, or importing, exporting or storing them for those purposes — where the person knew or ought to have known the secret was used unlawfully; Article 5(4) defines those as goods whose design, characteristics, functioning, production process or marketing significantly benefits from the secret. And Article 5(5) reaches the downstream recipient: acquisition, use or disclosure is unlawful where the person knew or ought to have known the secret came, directly or indirectly, from someone who acted unlawfully.
That last provision is why buying a dataset, a model or a codebase from a departing team is a diligence question and not merely a commercial one.
The defences — and the three that are not in force yet
Article 6 requires the court to reject an application for interim measures under Article 7 or a claim under Article 11 where the acquisition, use or disclosure was carried out for one of seven purposes:
| Art. 6(1) | Purpose | In force now? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Revealing misconduct, irregularity or unlawful activity, where the alleged infringer acted to protect the general public interest | Yes |
| 2 | Disclosure by employees to their representatives, where necessary for the legitimate performance of those representatives' functions under national law | Yes |
| 3 | Protection of legitimate interests in accordance with law | Yes |
| 4 | Exercising the right of access to information held by public authorities, and freedom of expression and information under media legislation | Yes |
| 5 | Freedom of expression and information under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights | Deferred (Art. 16) |
| 6 | Employee disclosure to representatives under EU law | Deferred (Art. 16) |
| 7 | Protection of legitimate interests in accordance with EU law | Deferred (Art. 16) |
Article 16 defers those three, together with Article 4(1) point 3 and Article 4(3), to the date of Montenegro's accession to the European Union. The pattern is the same one running through recent Montenegrin legislation: the EU-facing limbs of a transposed act are enacted but dormant. The domestic whistleblowing and legitimate-interest defences in points 1 to 4 operate now; the EU-law versions of the same ideas do not.
Interim measures come before the claim — and start a short clock
Article 7(1) allows the holder, or a licensee to the extent authorised, to seek interim measures before filing suit. Article 7(2) lists them: cessation or prohibition of use or disclosure; prohibition of producing, offering, marketing or using infringing goods, or importing, exporting or storing them; and provisional seizure or delivery up of suspected infringing goods. Article 7(3) allows the court to require security from the applicant.
Article 8 offers the mirror image: instead of the Article 7 measures, the court may allow the alleged infringer to continue the allegedly unlawful use against security for the holder's damage. Article 8(2) closes the obvious abuse — security in exchange for disclosure is not permitted. You can be allowed to keep using a secret against a bond; you cannot buy the right to publish it.
Article 9(1) sets the evidential threshold: the applicant must make it probable that the secret exists, that the applicant is the holder or licensee, and that the secret has been unlawfully acquired, used or disclosed, or that such conduct is imminent. Article 9(2) then lists eight factors, among them the value and specificity of the secret, the measures taken to protect it, the infringer's conduct, the impact of the unlawful use, and the public interest.
Article 10(1) point 1 is the deadline that decides cases. Interim measures are revoked if the applicant does not file the substantive claim within 20 working days or 31 calendar days from service of the interim-measure decision — whichever expires later. Article 10(1) point 2 revokes them where the information turns out not to satisfy Article 2 for reasons the alleged infringer is not responsible for. And Article 10(2) exposes the applicant: on the request of the alleged infringer or an affected third party, the court may order the applicant to compensate the damage the measures caused, where they were revoked for missing the deadline, lapsed through the applicant's act or omission, or where it is later established there was no unlawful conduct or threat of it.
The claim: two limitation periods, and a royalty ceiling
Article 11(1) gives the holder or licensee three years from the day they learned of the infringement and the infringer, and at the latest five years from the day the infringement was committed. Both run; the second is a long-stop.
Article 11(2) sets out the remedies: cessation or prohibition of use or disclosure; the prohibitions concerning infringing goods; specified actions on those goods (Article 11(3): recall, removal of the infringing quality, destruction or withdrawal); and destruction or delivery up of all documents, objects, materials or electronic files containing the secret or which are themselves the secret. Article 11(5) puts those at the infringer's cost absent justified reasons; Article 11(6) applies the same eight proportionality factors.
Article 12 limits the sting. Article 12(1) provides that where the court limits the duration of the measures, that duration must still be sufficient to remove any commercial or economic advantage the infringer could gain. Article 12(2) revokes them where the information no longer satisfies Article 2 for reasons outside the infringer's responsibility. And Article 12(3) allows the court to order pecuniary compensation instead of those measures where the person did not know and ought not to have known that the secret came from someone acting unlawfully, where the measures would cause them disproportionate harm, and where compensation appears appropriate — with Article 12(4) capping that payment at the royalty that would have been due had the infringer sought authorisation, for the period during which use could have been prohibited.
Article 13(1) gives damages against an infringer who knew or ought to have known. Article 13(2) directs the court to weigh the negative economic consequences including lost profit, the unfair profit made by the infringer, and non-material damage; Article 13(3) permits a lump sum based at least on the notional royalty. Article 14 allows the holder to have the final judgment published at the infringer's expense, subject to proportionality factors that include the infringer's privacy and reputation.
The provision that answers "won't suing expose the secret?"
This is the objection that stops most trade-secret claims, and Article 15 is the answer.
Article 15(1) prohibits anyone participating in the proceedings, or with access to the case documents, from using or disclosing a trade secret or alleged trade secret that the court has designated confidential on a reasoned request. Article 15(2) makes that duty survive after the proceedings end. Article 15(3) ends it only where the court finally holds that the information was not a trade secret under Article 2, or where the information becomes generally known to people who use it in their line of work.
Article 15(4) and (5) then oblige the court, on a reasoned request, to take specific measures: restricting access to the documents and to the relevant hearings and transcripts to a limited number of persons; releasing the confidential judgment only to that circle while everyone else receives a redacted version; and excluding the public from all or part of the proceedings. Article 15(6) sets the floor — that circle must include at least the claimant, the defendant and their representatives.
What to do before there is a dispute
Identify what you are claiming as secret in the "precise configuration or assembly of its components" language of Article 2 — "our technology is confidential" is not a definition a court can test. Then build the record of appropriate measures: access controls, confidentiality terms in employment and contractor documents, marking, offboarding. Those are the facts Article 9(2) point 2 and Article 11(6) point 2 put in front of the judge, twice.
Watch the clocks: interim relief before suit under Article 7(1), then 20 working days or 31 calendar days under Article 10(1) point 1, and three years from knowledge or five from the act under Article 11(1).
Note also where this Act sits relative to the two neighbouring regimes. The copyright statute allocates ownership of a computer program and of works made in employment; that analysis is in the four clauses in your SaaS contract. And where output is generated without a human creator, the authorship question is genuinely open, which we set out in what already regulates your AI system in Montenegro — in that situation trade-secret protection is not a supplement to copyright, it is the only protection on the table, and it exists only if the Article 2 measures were taken.
Before the next person leaves with the repository
If a former employee, contractor, joint-venture partner or prospective buyer has left with your code, your data or your commercial information, or you are about to disclose any of it in a process, send us what was disclosed, to whom, under what document, and what access controls existed at the time. We will assess whether the information meets all three limbs of Article 2, whether the Article 4 lawful-acquisition routes are open to the other side, which of the Article 7 interim measures fits, and what the Article 10 and Article 11 clocks mean for the order in which steps are taken. The signature and execution layer for the underlying documents is in Montenegro's new e-signature law, and how we run technology files sits with our IT law practice.
