Trade secrets and public domain

August 24, 2009
Intellectual Property News and Interesting Facts

If guarded properly, trade secrets are forever. A business may keep the formula to Coca-Cola a secret. However, once it is disclosed to the public, the former secret enters public domain, although an invention using the former secret may still be patentable if it is not barred by statute. Some businesses choose to protect products, processes, and information by guarding them as trade secrets, rather than patenting them. Hershey Foods, Inc., for example, does not patent some of its processes, such as the recipe for Reese’s, but rather maintains them as trade secrets, to prevent competitors from easily duplicating or learning from their invention disclosures, or from using the information after the patent lapses. One risk, however, is that anyone may reverse engineer a product and thus discover (and copy and publish) all of its secrets, to the extent they are not covered by other laws (e.g. contract).