Trade Secret
Confidential business information that gives you an edge, a formula, algorithm, process, or customer list, protected by keeping it secret rather than by registration.
Why it matters
Trade secrets can protect what patents cannot or should not disclose, but the protection lasts only as long as the secret holds. Guarding them through NDAs, access controls, and good practice is the price of that protection.
For example
Coca-Cola protects its formula as a trade secret rather than patenting it, since a patent would require publishing exactly how it is made.
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