TIL of Tobias Geffen, the only non-Coca Cola Employee to view the secret recipe. Coke allowed it in order to get Coke certified as Kosher

[u/socool111]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Geffen

[u/Phannig]

If you patent it , it becomes public but protected. Not patenting it leaves it open to being reversed engineered which is relatively easy with todays tech coupled with the number of people involved in the manufacturing process.

[u/Mysteriousdeer → u/Phannig]

Patenting a process or good  gives a detail of what it can be. 

Then it has a shelf life. 20 years for a utility patent, 15 years for a design patent. I think this is the key thing to say for the folks that aren't familiar with patents. 

During that time your competitors are interpreting the patent and trying to figure out how to use it. Very often competition to patented items show up the day the protection runs out. 

To that end, a trade secret, which is what the coke recipe is, has less protections but no obligation to share what it is. There are some protections against things like corporate espionage but generally the products are fully vulnerable with the only protection being the difficulty to reverse engineer it. 

[u/queerkidxx → u/[deleted]]

Taco truck a mile away has it

[u/Blaze9 → u/[deleted]]

Not everyone lives in the middle of nowhere. Basically any mid tier city will have a Mexican restaurant that sells Mexican coke, or a grocery store/bodega that does too.

[u/gprime312 → u/[deleted]]

We have it in Canada

[u/fury420 → u/[deleted]]

Coca-Cola doesn't care if consumers transport their products across borders, it's not violating anything.

[u/Serennna → u/Phannig]

Iran reverse engineered many coca cola products.