A Patent May not be the Best Vehicle to Protect Your Business’ Idea

If a business has a new idea or product, the immediate thought is to go out and patent the idea. While this may be appropriate in some cases, in others utilizing Trade Secret law may serve you better. If you take a look at products like Coca Cola or Krispy Kreme donuts, they have protected their secret recipes through Trade Secret law not Patent law. A patent can be very expensive, and its protection is finite. There is also no guarantee it will be granted and in order to receive the patent, you must divulge the secret of the product.

Coca Cola has protected its secret formula for over 100 years, and Krispy Kreme for almost 80 years through Trade Secret protection. In order to qualify for Trade Secret protection you must take reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy. Trade Secret protection works well for products that are not easily reverse engineered. While you can protect a Trade Secret against theft of the secret, or divulgence by employees, you are not protected if someone can reverse engineer the product, if the secret is made available through research or publication, public use, or if someone independently invents the same thing.
So, Trade Secret law is not the end-all be-all of protection, but it is important to realize that in some cases (especially those involving chemical reactions) Trade Secret protection may be much more valuable to your company than a patent for the product.

Sean M. Sweeney

You can read my regular blog at www.MilwaukeeBusinessLawBlog.com