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With certain products, it’s not possible to reverse engineer the product. For example, with Coca-Cola, everybody has tried, everybody knows what’s in Coca-Cola, but they don’t know how to get there. And so people come close, other people not so close, but the formula has never been revealed, and it’s gone decades and decades beyond what would have been the patent period had they chosen to get a patent on it.

If they had patented it, they would have been protected in those years for 17 years, this year, now it’s longer, 20 years from filing. But after that period, everybody would have seen the formula, and everybody would have known what it was, and it would have been really of no value to Coca-Cola.

But instead, they’ve took the trade secret route, and it’s the perfect example of what works for a trade secret.