Trade Secrets.

A trade secret can be any one of these examples: a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern or a complication of information. They are owned by business' that obtain an economic advantage over their consumers or competitors.
In England, a Trade Secret is usually referred to as "Confidential Information", but in America they're called "Classified Information", which is mainly used to describe something that is protected by the U.S government.
To protect a Trade Secret from competitors, business' place special procedures for handling this whether it be technical or via security measures, this includes NDA's, non-compete clauses and employees signing agreements.
If there is a violation or a breach in an agreement from an employee then there would most likely be a very heavy financial penalty carried out and an injunction to make sure that the trade secret is still under protection. Trying to prove that a former employee has breached their agreement can be extremely difficult and the holder of the trade secret may have to agree to another agreement.
The law of protection on a Trade Secret doesn't expire like a patent would, which means that they're protected for much longer. Usually secret formulae are protected by restricting vital information to 1 or 2 trusted people.
To discover a trade secret, some companies go to extreme measures to try and obtain that information by going through lawful methods such as reverse engineering or poaching other companies' employees. The unlawful methods that they go through are things like industrial espionage which is illegal in its own right under the governing laws, "If a trade secret is improper the secret is deemed misappropriated". If a secret is acquired through industrial espionage, then that person will be a subject of legal liability for obtaining it improperly.

-Rebecca Hickey