What's the idea behind legal protection for trade secrets?
So if employees of Coca-Cola conspire to steal the (trade) secret formulation for Coke, the company can sue them for damages. There can be criminal offenses as well.
Trade secrets are used in situations where there's a secret (like some manufacturing process) that can't easily be reverse-engineered from the product. In that case, the owner can keep the secret as long as they wish. No patent to expire, no transfer of the IP to the public domain. For as long as the secret can be kept.
Of course, there's no legal protection from reverse-engineering a trade secret. Somebody who RE'd Coke's formula would not only be free to use it but could patent it as well. The patent holder might even be able to sue Coke for patent infringement.
- Patents serve to provide a temporary shelter for monopolizing new ideas and methodologies to allow them to be developed
- Trademarks serve to guarantee consumers can differentiate products and their producers
- Copyright serves to allow people to make money from creative works while distributing them widely.
Trade secrets? Trade secrets allow a company to monopolize a market with no benefit to the public in the long run. They deserve exactly zero legal protections.
The Coca-Cola company and defendants Williams and Dimson might differ, as well [2].
[1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/international-...
[2] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-11th-circuit/1234095.html
