Intellectual Property Law

Yahoo.com is reporting that KFC, owner of one of the most famous corporate trade secrets out there–the secret handwritten recipe of 11 herbs and spices which exists on a yellowing sheet of paper signed by Colonel Sanders himself–is moving the recipe in order to revamp security. You can find the article here.

It’s always interesting to note the extremes that famous trade secret owners sometimes need to take to ensure that their trade secret remains secret. Similar to the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, only two company executives at a time know the 11 herbs and spices and their precise measurements.

Key graphs:

“So important is the 68-year-old concoction that coats the chain’s Original Recipe chicken that only two company executives at any time have access to it. The company refuses to release their name or title, and it uses multiple suppliers who produce and blend the ingredients but know only a part of the entire contents. . . .”

“For more than 20 years, the recipe has been tucked away in a filing cabinet equipped with two combination locks in company headquarters. To reach the cabinet, the keepers of the recipe would first open up a vault and unlock three locks on a door that stood in front of the cabinet.

Vials of the herbs and spices are also stored in the secret filing cabinet.

“The smell is overwhelming when you open it,” said one of two keepers of the recipe in an interview at company headquarters.

The biggest prize, though, is a single sheet of notebook paper, yellowed by age, that lays out the entire formula ? including exact amounts for each ingredient ? written in pencil and signed by Sanders.”

While the majority of the readers of this blog do not have to worry about such high security, it is always interesting to note when the protection of these major trade secrets arises in the news.