Bob Fraser and others explain how to protect intellectual property abroad. Coca-Cola's unpatented formula shows why trade secrets beat patents: keep the whole thing locked down, or split it by licensing only part of the recipe while hiding the core.
I always tell companies, if you can keep it secret, keep it secret.
So how are you, you know, helping protect companies that want to expand internationally or need to expand internationally to hit their revenue projections?
I always tell companies, if you can keep it secret, keep it secret.
Yeah.
Okay. So if you can sell half the recipe or license half the recipe—
like Coca-Cola, right? Is not patented, right? It's better to have a trade secret, which There you go, right?
Exactly. You can either keep it secret, which is often a challenge to keep it completely secret like Coca-Cola does, or you can sell half the cake and provide the inputs for the rest of the cake so that half the secrets are on this side of the pond or in a secure location that you can trust. That's really, really important.
