Trade Secrets were not protected under US law until 1996. All of the upsides of trade secrets you list are benefits that they have, despite a complete lack of g

Trade Secrets were not protected under US law until 1996. All of the upsides of trade secrets you list are benefits that they have, despite a complete lack of government enforcement, as it should be. Coke protected its formula for over a century with NDAs and effective security measures. They went through enormous effort and expense to protect the secret, because the law until 1996 said that they were responsible for their own secrets. Some of Google's algorithms get leaked and they go whining to the government demanding that people be thrown in prison for espionage. It's a bastardization of the purpose of intellectual property. There is nothing wrong with trade secrets. There is something very wrong with government underwriting the risk involved in building a business reliant on trade secrets. Patents exist as an incentive to publish: you show us your work, we let you have a total monopoly on it for 20 years. Trade secret protections break that deal. If the government will now give you a monopoly for the rest of eternity on any invention that you label "secret", then there is no reason to publish anything ever, the state of the art stagnates, and the technology industry becomes dominated by uncontestable monopolies with the power to throw you in prison if you look over their shoulders.