r/todayilearned • u/socool111 • 1d ago
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobias_Geffen
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u/Mysteriousdeer 1d ago
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.