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Coca Cola Case Study

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1. Coca-Cola had kept it’s recipe a trade secret for over 100 years. It has been kept in bank vaults with very stringent protocols as to who may have access to the written recipe. The people that Coca-Cola allow to have the knowledge of the recipe have signed non-disclosure statements. They can make the syrup but are not able to share the recipe. In 1925 the recipe went into the bank vault of Trust Company of Georgia. The bank may have changed names over the years but it still protected Coca-Cola’s recipe until 2011, when Coca-Cola moved the recipe to the vault they built to house the recipe. 2. The expense of the agreements that Coca-Cola had to make too protect the secret recipe has been a huge challenge. They had to stop producing Coca-Cola in India because under the Indian Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) it is required to disclose the formula and collaborate with an Indian company. There have been numerous law suits over the years most notable was the bottling lawsuit. 3. Two reasons Coca-Cola decided to keep the recipe as a trade secret instead of another form of intellectual property are to patent the recipe, the recipe must be published and is only protected for 17 years and yet, to copywrite protect the recipe it has to be published and that doesn’t stop anyone for making the recipe. They just can’t publish it. The safest way to protect a recipe is to keep it a trade secret if, you are able to keep it secret. Part B 1. Three problems covered by the American

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