Handling External
Party Information
Gathering Competitive Information
While P&G needs to know what our competitors are doing in order to effectively compete, none of us may gather information about our competitors using deception, theft, misrepresentation, or other illegal or unethical means.
- You must not request competitively sensitive information from family or friends about their employers, or new hires about their former employers.
- In addition, in most circumstances you should also not ask for information directly from our competitors, as this can raise considerable legal risks.
- You must talk with Legal before asking for information directly from our competitors or before using information on current or future prices and commercial terms practiced by competitors, even if collected from third parties such as retailers.
If a P&G supplier or customer is also one of our competitors, you must not solicit confidential information from them in areas of competitive overlap without talking to Legal first. In addition, you must not ask them to share confidential information from their suppliers or customers.
None of us may gather information about our competitors using deception, theft, misrepresentation, or other illegal or unethical means.
External Party Intellectual Property and Commercial Rights
We should respect all external party intellectual property (IP) rights and other intangible commercial rights belonging to others. Intellectual property includes creative works, personality rights, and other ideas and inventions protected by law such as copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, and design rights, among others. We should never knowingly infringe upon these rights.
- Your duty to respect all external party IP and commercial rights applies to any business activities you conduct, including the creation of any internal or external communications or marketing materials.
- You must check with Legal before using the name or materials of another person or company.
You must use all external party assets – including software, music, videos and text-based content – in accordance with the specific terms of their licenses.
Only software properly licensed for business use is permitted to be used. This means you must not use software or applications that you licensed for personal use (such as apps on your personal smartphone or iPad) for business use.
