And, frankly, I think that even in the case of corporate secrets, it ought to be incredibly limited. People should have the right to take the things they've learned and apply them in future jobs.
"the things they've learned" is not the same as "corporate secrets." It is possible for ex-employees to abuse their ex-employer in this way. But applying that stricture unfairly is at least equally common.
Fitzbillies Bakery/Cafe in Cambridge was famous for its Chelsea Buns. After a serious fire it ceased trading. Eventually new occupiers started a bakery/cafe on the site. They wanted the recipe for the Chelsea Buns, so they found an old employee and got the recipe from her. I suspect that could be called a corporate secret.
The owners of the new business even included a version of the recipe in a recipe book that they published. IIRC they say it isn't exactly the recipe they use, since the commercial version wouldn't work for domestic quantities.
I don't know whether there was an NDA involved but I never heard that the original owners had a problem.
Hah, people in and around Boston (Mass.) still get feisty over the famous Jordan Marsh (department store) bakery's blueberry muffin recipe, which was never officially published because Sekrit and therefore circulates as several different recipes, none of which are the same.
Andy this reads as though you don’t think IP should exist and surely I must be misunderstanding. If a business’s competitive advantage rests wlog on a recipe then surely they have the right to preserve its secrecy? I completely get that it’s different when the original business no longer exists as above, but the comment reads (to me) as wider than that.
I think that if small businesses can’t protect eg recipes then large organisations who can eg outsource manufacturing or realise scale benefits will (pun not intended) eat them up.
Large organisations can generally reverse engineer recipes. Particularly nowadays.
I don't think that "We can't work out how to make this particular food" is a real thing. And I'm not aware of any modern cases of small bakers valiantly holding off the megacorps with their unreplicable recipes. Not when with a reasonable research budget you can do this kind of thing: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf504953s
And if it was then I'd be on the side of the additional millions of people who got to eat the nicer food over the 4 bakers who got to keep it from them.
I left an employer after a significant spell of ill health. I had been offered a deal and my professional advisers (including someone from my union head office) advised me to take it, even though it contained an NDA. I asked about whether NDAs are a bad thing in principle. The answer appeared to suggest that it without NDAs there might not be similar deals. I wasn't convinced but didn't have a lot of energy to argue.
The NDA specifically says that I cannot mention a particular sum of money, which I can well understand from the employer's point of view.
2. The main point of NDAs appears to lie the revelation of their existence hanging a large 'this person is an arsehole, avoid avoid avoid' sign over the head of whoever the initiator was. The latter may as well carry around a loudspeaker and announce "yes, I treat people like shit and then try and cover it up with money and lawyers."
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andrewducker) wrote2025-04-22 12:00 pm
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Yeah, maybe spilling corporate secrets to a new employer, though even that can be applied unfairly. But besides that.
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And, frankly, I think that even in the case of corporate secrets, it ought to be incredibly limited. People should have the right to take the things they've learned and apply them in future jobs.
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After a serious fire it ceased trading. Eventually new occupiers started a bakery/cafe on the site. They wanted the recipe for the Chelsea Buns, so they found an old employee and got the recipe from her.
I suspect that could be called a corporate secret.
The owners of the new business even included a version of the recipe in a recipe book that they published. IIRC they say it isn't exactly the recipe they use, since the commercial version wouldn't work for domestic quantities.
I don't know whether there was an NDA involved but I never heard that the original owners had a problem.
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"We taught you how to make a cake, and now you must never use that knowledge." seems incredibly wrong to me.
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I don't see the casual link there
And I believe in very limited IP.
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I think that if small businesses can’t protect eg recipes then large organisations who can eg outsource manufacturing or realise scale benefits will (pun not intended) eat them up.
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I don't think that "We can't work out how to make this particular food" is a real thing. And I'm not aware of any modern cases of small bakers valiantly holding off the megacorps with their unreplicable recipes. Not when with a reasonable research budget you can do this kind of thing: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf504953s
And if it was then I'd be on the side of the additional millions of people who got to eat the nicer food over the 4 bakers who got to keep it from them.
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I’m also not sure if this is 100% true but I think that if people don’t think they own the rights to what they invent, they stop inventing things.
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This is interesting. I thought this argument would have low currency with you and the other one higher, but I got it the wrong way round.
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I had been offered a deal and my professional advisers (including someone from my union head office)
advised me to take it, even though it contained an NDA. I asked about whether NDAs are a bad thing in principle. The answer appeared to suggest that it without NDAs there might not be similar deals. I wasn't convinced but didn't have a lot of energy to argue.
The NDA specifically says that I cannot mention a particular sum of money, which I can well understand from the employer's point of view.
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