You want to protect the confidential aspects of your business. That’s where trade secret law comes in. Trade Secrets are the secrets of your business. These include formulas, customer lists, lab data, patterns, labor and employment secrets, or anything else not generally known. Usually, Trade Secrets are used interchangeably with confidential information. The exact nature of legally protected trade secrets varies by the trade secret laws in different states.

Protecting your Trade Secrets

The main way to avoid trade secret issues is the obvious – keep them secret. Do not reveal them. There are situations where you must, such as when you file for a patent application.

Great ways to protect your trade secrets include non-disclosure agreements with your employees, work-for-hire agreements, and non-compete clauses.

The confidentiality agreements should contain clauses to not reveal the secrets of the organization.

One thing to remember is that if the agreements specify that the company is party to the contract, then who owns the trade secrets in the event that the company dissolves? That’s a good question to ask your trade secret attorney.

Trade Secret Misappropriation

Trade secret misappropriation occurs during the theft of trade secrets. Maybe an ex-employee or former partner took your customer lists. Did you have a back-up?

We counsel clients in protecting their trade secrets. This includes drafting non-disclosure agreements and advising them to whom they can share their business proprietary information.

Trade secrets include anything that is proprietary and confidential to the business. This could be anything from customer lists to your invention prototype.

You worked for hard for your business. Protect your trade secrets!

Trade Secret Litigation

Misappropriation of trade secrets come to light in many business disputes. Oftentimes, another party divulged or utilized proprietary information in a manner that damaged the owner of the intellectual property.

Unfair competition

The misappropriation of trade secrets is a form of unfair competition. Businesses who steal the confidential and proprietary information of another should be held accountable. Hire a trade secret attorney!

Intersection with patent law

You need a trade secret attorney who is also versed in patent law. In a lot of ways, trade secret law is the flip side of the patent law coin. Patents require a public disclosure of your invention to the government, who will publish it.

Trade secrets remain secret as long you as maintain the secrecy.

Your invention is a trade secret until your patent is granted or the patent application is published. Until then, you absolutely must protect it as such.

Trade Secrets – Coca-Cola

This leads to a very interesting situation with the recipe of Coca-Cola.

The recipe Coca-Cola is probably the most valuable trade secret out there. We know the composition of the drink because they must disclose the ingredients as part of the FDA regulations. However, the exact recipe remains hidden from the world.

Years ago, the Coca-Cola manufacturer decided not to patent the formula. If they had patented it, then they would have had to release the full formula as part of their patent application. When the patent was issued, the whole world would have seen the full formula of Coca-Cola.

Instead, they choose to keep it a secret. This allowed them to maintain the secrecy of their formula. However, it also meant that they could never obtain a patent on it because the use in commerce for more than one year would usually bar someone from getting a patent.

It also means that they must fight tooth and nail to maintain the secrecy of the formula. If it were released, then copy-cat Coca-Cola products would flood the market.

Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA)

The UTSA is a law to help uniform trade secret law throughout the United States. However, New York is one of the last hold outs and has not adopted the UTSA.

Economic Espionage Act of 1996 (EEA)

The EEA is a federal law covers the protection of trade secrets. However, it can only be enforced by the federal government.