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@zerospinboson: There are a number of historical instances of (commercially) important processes that were held as trade secrets, and then lost in wars or through accident. The first one that springs to mind is the "secret" of murex dye (that would the the "imperial purple" of the ancient world). The family that was the sole source of this dye was wiped out when the city they lived in (Tyre? I don't remember) was sacked in an invasion. And the formula for the dye went with them. They'd kept it secret to keep the price high and maintain their monopoly on the product.
An alternate example comes from my own past. I was the core of the R&D department of a small optimizing compiler company. For over a decade, all my work was held as a trade secret. It was 'published' only by being embodied in shipping products. I got to grumble at the PLDI conference proceedings each year as yet another thing I'd done with my team years earlier was published as 'new work' by someone else. When software patents arrived, I suddenly became able to publish! The discussion would go like this:
Me: "Can I publish this invention?"
Manager: "No."
Me: "Then do we plan to apply for a patent on it?"
Case A: Manager says yes, we apply for the patent, and publish via the patent office.
Case B: Manager says no.
Me: "Then we'd better publish quickly, before someone else patents it out from under us!"
Manager: "Start writing. Now!"
Note that both cases (after software patents) led to prompt disclosure of the invention, where all cases before software patents yielded a trade secret. And the trade secrets held up disclosure unless and until someone else made and published the same invention.
Some of our work was duplicated independently. Some is minor. And some publishable (and maybe even major) advances remain both unpublished and un-duplicated to this day -- 16 years later!
Xenophon
(whose NDAs expire in only a couple more years...)
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