Coatings World - August 2014

by Steve McDaniel and Jon Hurt, Contributing Editors

Maybe that’s a little harsh. But, that indeed WAS the punish- ment exacted by Chinese emperors for several thousand years upon anyone caught attempting to export Bombyx mori (silkworms) or mulberry seeds (Morus alba) in order to start international silkworm competition ( sericulture). But, sericulture reached Korea around 200 BC, when waves of Chinese immigrants arrived there.

Silk reached the West through a number of different channels. Shortly after AD 300, sericulture traveled westward and the cultivation of the silkworm was established in India. Stories are also told how, in AD 440, a Khotan prince ( today’s Hetian, a kingdom on the rim of Taklamakan desert) courted and won a Chinese princess. The princess smuggled out silkworm eggs by hiding them in her voluminous hairpiece - then Khotan kept the secret too (why share it with the Westerners and kill a good market.

Then around AD 550, two Nestorian monks appeared at the Byzantine Emperor Justinian’s court with silkworm eggs hidden in the hollow bamboo staves they carried (sneaky, but hardly original). The Byzantine church created imperial workshops, monopolizing production-again keeping the secret to themselves. This allowed a silk industry to be established in the Middle East, undercutting the market for ordinary-grade Chinese silk. By the sixth century the Persians, too, had mastered the art of silk weaving, developing their own rich textile artistry. It was only around the time of the Second Crusades 13th Century) that Italy began silk production with the introduction of 2000 skilled silk weavers from Constantinople. Eventually silk production became widespread in Europe.

So it goes with trade secrets – they are only as good as your ability to keep them a secret! But, several thousand years? Dadgummit! That beats Coca Cola’s allegedly-deeply-vaulted and highly-vaunt-ed secret formula by at least a couple of millennia.

It goes to show you though that protection of trade secrets on an international scale has been with us for a VERY long time.

Ratchet quickly forward to the present times. Just as is the case between states in the U.S., trade secret laws range all over the place internationally.

The likely reason for this disharmony is, of course, money. Filing a patent gives a government an opportunity to charge patent fees for virtually every contact with a patent office. Naturally, this was a model that had a built in incentive that inspired nations across the world to adopt and harmonize laws and procedures globally. In contrast, a trade secret is, at its core, simply maintaining information as confidential. And governments can’t easily charge a fee on what they don’t know exists. Hence, laws protecting trade secrets have been slower to standardize between jurisdictions, though the trend to smooth out differences is clearly visible.

In the United States, trade secrets
have historically been protected by in-
dividual state common laws. This made
seeking legal regress for misappropria-
tion a more costly proposition given the
use of multiple lawyers familiar with
different local statutes. However, af-
ter a couple centuries the U.S. started
to get its act together with the publi-
cation of the Uniform Trade Secrets
Act in 1979. After a few decades, some
form of this act has now been made the
statute in 47 states. Adoption is pend-
ing in Massachusetts, with New York
and North Carolina being the remaining
holdouts. Is the same trend happening
elsewhere in the World? It would appear
to be so.