Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market

Exemplary Trade-Secret Cases

It goes without saying that technical and commercial information and collateral know-how that can be protected via the trade-secret route cannot include information and know-how, which is generally known, readily ascertainable, or constitutes personal skill. But this exclusion still leaves masses of data and know-how, which are the grist for trade secrets and additional improvement patents.

General Electric’s industrial diamond process technology is an excellent illustration of the synergistic integration of patents and trade secrets. The artificial manufacture of diamonds for industrial uses was very big business for GE, and the company had the best proprietary technology for making such diamonds. Some of the patents had already expired, leaving much of the technology in technical literature and the public domain. But GE also kept certain distinct inventions and developments secret. The Soviet Union and a Far Eastern country were very interested in obtaining licenses to this technology, but GE refused to license anyone. Getting nowhere with GE, the Far Eastern interests resorted to industrial espionage, and a trusted fast-track star performer at GE, a national of that country, whom nobody would have suspected, was enticed with million-dollar payments to spirit away GE’s crown jewels. But after a while the GE employee was caught, tried, and jailed.

The integration of patents and trade secrets is further demonstrated by Wyeth and their hormone-therapy ...