Trade Secrets: What Are Reasonable Efforts To Maintain Secrecy?
You can protect your secret formulas, recipes, or processes through trade secret law as long as the information at question is valuable to your business and you keep the information secret. But what measures do you have to take to maintain secrecy?
The Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act, which governs trade secrets in Florida, only requires the information to be subjected to efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain secrecy.
One of the more famous cases that concern the maintenance of trade secrets is that of Coca-Cola. As you may be familiar, the secret formula for Coca-Cola is known to only a handful of senior executives. Each recipe holder must swear by oath not to disclose the secret recipe. This inclusive group appoints a successor when one of them dies to ensure the number of individuals with knowledge of the Coke formula remains constant. Finally, the designated executives are not permitted to travel together because a single accident might eliminate the formula’s existence.
Another case involved KFC's extreme measures taken to protect their recipe from being stolen, during its relocation.
Surely, you do not have to go to these extremes to protect your trade secret. Secrecy is the main requirement. Therefore, you can maintain secrecy simply by not disclosing your information. You can accomplish this by keeping written documents, such as recipes, in a secured environment such as a safe or even a locked drawer. Also, if you must disclose your information, to essential employees for example, be sure that you use a confidentiality agreement or have them sign a non-disclosure form. Furthermore, if you wish to protect a website source code, you can prevent Internet users from viewing the code.
I disclosed the secret to preserving trade secrets in an article published by the Jacksonville Business Journal; read to find out more!
