What are the important implications from a trade secret loss?

When a Coca Cola employee decided that selling secrets about a new drink flavour to Pepsi would bag her a fortune, she had not thought through the implications of trade secrets theft.

Joya Williams was given an 8 jail year sentence by an Atlanta court.

When she approached Pepsi offering highly confidential information and asking for $1.5m, the executive who she had approached immediately alerted their equivalent executive at Coca Cola, who in turn got the FBI involved. The evidence was clear as the  pages of the Coca-Cola documents were marked “confidential information” or “classified-highly restricted”.

Williams did not compromise the mythical Coca Cola trade secret recipe, but she did share information about a new flavoured Coca-Cola drink.

The damage was averted in this case but the risks were high and costly for Coca Cola.

Ever wonder why you do not hear about this kind of thing? Well companies do not publicise their loss of trade secrets, they keep the loss quiet, because they are worried about damaging their reputation.

The biggest transfer of wealth in history.

Trade secret loss / theft / misappropriation is responsible for the biggest (and perhaps easiest) transfer of wealth in history! The general public are not aware about this because companies play it down, publicity is poor and often the cases can be complex.

What are the important implications from a trade secrets loss? – The answer is high for both the company and the persons involved.

Trade secrets law is developing and being strengthened all the time, especially as governments have come to recognise how important trade secrets are in protecting both innovative and commercial information.

What are you doing to reduce and prevent trade secret loss?

Want a simple and easy to implement programme then please get in touch.

I am John Pryor, making IP accessible and valuable for your business.

The Benefit of Hindsight Upfront^TM

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JOHN PRYOR: I am John Pryor, I am a strategy consultant focussed on intellectual property and dedicated to supporting people and business to make the best use of all available IP to compete and win in the marketplace.

My aims are to maximise people’s understanding and to help develop their skills, so that they can deploy IP in their business successfully and cost effectively, to help achieve a higher valuation.

Book: The Innovation Handbook, 2nd Edition 2010. chapter:  How to maximize the value of your intellectual property.

ABOUT MY YOUTUBE VIDEOS: In these videos I explain some of the most important aspects of intellectual property in ways that make it relevant and accessible to business people.

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