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The effects of trade secrets becoming public knowledge

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Worlder What? Since: Jan, 2001
What?
#1: Mar 23rd 2011 at 5:33:08 PM

Now first off it isn't done willingly by the company. A rival company stole it. Also it is nothing incriminating.

Now in an action that will probably invoke Fridge Logic, the company instead of profiting from stolen knowledge simply began releasing the formula or whatever directly into the public.

What would happen once the whole world knows how it's made or done?

SilentReverence adopting kitteh from 3 tiles right 1 tile up Since: Jan, 2010
adopting kitteh
#2: Mar 23rd 2011 at 9:49:10 PM

In the general of course it depends on precisely what's in the formula. But the overall change that the world will observe is that, now that the procedure is known, it is also testable. What would that entail depends mostly on how well-known the product is and how costly it is to reproduce the steps of the formula.

If you had a product that relied on trade secret and you had people wearing your brand's logo offering the product door-to-door, for example, suddenly those people must be able to prove the product is actualy the real schword (before that people would just assume that only someone associated with your brand would have access to the product to sell).

Of course, if the magic formula involves some sort of dangerous, unapproved, unethical or alien thing, you're in for a different level of effects entirely. Like, say, what happens if Coca-Cola does really have some good LSD thrown in.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
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