Protecting Your Company’s Trade Secrets: What You Need to Know

Many businesses live and breathe by their intellectual property. Foundational in many businesses, protecting trade secrets is often essential to ensuring your company’s edge over competitors.

The tricky part about trade secrets is they are meant to be kept secret. This can become a difficult, but essential, task. So what are trade secrets? What are some strategies you can employ to protect them? And how do you enforce legal protections for your trade secrets? This article is meant to start a general discussion on these complex issues: for formal advice in your own circumstances, contact an experienced small business attorney at the Forsythe Law Firm.

What Are Trade Secrets?

Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property – but not every piece of intellectual property is the same as a trade secret. Intellectual property might include things like unique copyrights that exist out in the public sphere. The copyright protects the unique idea from being copied and utilized by others.

A trade secret, on the other hand, does not necessarily even have to be very unique. But it does have certain qualities. A trade secret is information that

• Has actual or potential value
• Is not generally known in your industry (giving an advantage over competitors)
• You have made reasonable efforts to keep it secret and confidential.

As noted above, trade secrets do not have to be new, completely unique ideas. The information just needs to have a “modicum of originality.”

Protecting Trade Secrets

Business owners might try to protect trade secrets by taking action such as

• marking trade secret materials as “confidential”.
• Limiting access to trade secret materials
• Requiring those who have access to trade secret materials to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Trade Secret Examples

Trade secret examples are everywhere: and the concept can be introduced even to young viewers, watching Plankton try to steal Mr. Krab’s secret formula in the Spongebob universe. Secret recipes are an excellent example of how trade secrets work. Take, for example, the real-world Crumbl Franchise.

The makers of Crumbl did not invent a new foodstuff ingredient that they put into their cookies to make them more popular. No, like any recipe, they have a unique blend of ingredients in unique quantities that form the base of their products. While the base ingredients are, presumably, common ingredients that anyone could access, Crumbl regards their unique mix of ingredients and their quantities as a trade secret.

Though there are many Crumbl store locations, the base ingredients for most of their cookies are not widely known. The pre-measured ingredients are delivered to the store in packets. Utilizing this delivery method arguably demonstrates an effort on behalf of Crumbl owners to keep the recipe secret – protecting a “trade secret.” Reportedly, some workers are also required to sign NDAs. Other examples of companies who protect their recipes include KFC’s spices for their fried chicken, as well as the Coca-Cola recipe.

How Can I Enforce Legal Protection for My Trade Secrets? Contact the Forsythe Law Firm

Once a trade secret has been made public, it loses its protection. However, trade secrets which are made public due to misappropriation may still be able to be enforced. Misappropriation could be someone with a fiduciary duty improperly disclosing the trade secret, or someone breaking the terms of their NDA.

If you need help assessing your own trade secret situation – contact an esteemed Atlanta small business attorney at the Forsythe Law Firm.

Sources:

oregonlive.com/business/2025/08/former-intel-engineer-sentenced-for-stealing-trade-secrets-for-microsoft.html

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-13/us-chip-gear-maker-sued-in-china-over-alleged-trade-secret-theft