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> I always thought that their purpose was to eliminate trade secrets: people are going to invent stuff whether you want to or not, but without patents, they'll
by renox 8y ago
> I always thought that their purpose was to eliminate trade secrets: people are going to invent stuff whether you want to or not, but without patents, they'll take the secrets to the grave.
Except that if you look at the history of inventions you'll notice that quite frequently several people invented the same thing independently at almost the same time (the phone for example).
So the risk of losing a 'trade secrets' isn't that high..
- CalChris 8y agoTwo people can hold the same (independently discovered) trade secret. If I slave away and re-discover the Coke recipe, I can keep it and use it as a trade secret. But if I intern at Coke and steal it, I can go to jail for trade secret theft. A patent incents me to slave away and then requires me to teach the patent in exchange for a limited monopoly. Trade secret law only punishes me for stealing but incents me to keep secrets. The trouble with trade secrets is that I have to be able to exploit my invention and still keep it a secret. I probably can't do that with the phone. So I wouldn't slave away working on that problem if the best protection I could get is a trade secret.