Chapter 8

Keeping Secrets

Trade Secrets and Employment Contracts

When Is a Secret a Secret?

Much earlier in this text, it was stated that secrets require that they be known only to a very few people, perhaps not even in total to any single person, to remain a secret. Successfully kept trade secrets seem to be, for the most part, formulas for the mixing of ingredients resulting in a specific product or processes by which ingredients are treated using heat or pressure or some other physical manipulation to produce the desired product, or a combination of formula and process. Also earlier on in this text, the trade secrecy involving the formula for Coca-Cola concentrate and its recent transfer from a vault at SunTrust Bank in Atlanta, home of the ...

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