Part A
Using the Internet as a resource, research the Coca-Cola Company’s efforts to keep its soft drink formula a trade secret over the course of the company’s (and a soft drink’s) one hundred-year-plus history.
- Provide a brief summary of The Coca-Cola Company’s efforts to protect its soft drink formula as a trade secret.
The company has put several measures to see that the formula for its soft drinks is highly protected and that no competitor gets access to it. The first effort, which the company has done to ensure that her secrets are never accessed, is by never patenting it. The Coca Cola decided to use trade secret, as opposed to patenting to conceal the formula information. This has proven success as the information has not fallen into corrupt hands. The company is always at the top in the industry. Keeping the Coca Cola formula free from patenting makes sure no one ever sees it. It is a smart technique of ensuring that its competitors never get it. Another way is by keeping the formula in a secure place, where it remains a top secret. Those who can access it are only the top most officials, and one has to have a very good reason to get to see it. This has made the company to produce products that are unique in taste and no other can compete with the company. In the year 1925, for instance, the secret formula was kept in a vault in a bank. Here, it stayed for decades. In 2011, the company just showed the vault where it was kept-just the vault and nobody is sure whether it was inside. As a protection mechanism, the company has popularized itself to the entire world through scholarships and sponsorships, such that the name has made it famous and humanity always associated it with high quality products. Its popularity has kept it going, regardless of some critiques associating the formula with chronic diseases such as cancer, but this information has never yielded.
- Describe one (1) challenge the company has faced in preserving its trade secret.
The company has faced many challenges. For instance, most of the top officials at one moment in time made an attempt to steal the formula and gave it to a rival company Pepsi Cola. The corrupt minds wanted to kill the company through selling its top secret recipe. This was a reported case. It followed that the company had to come up with newer and better techniques of security to make sure such instance would never repeat in the future. However, humanity will never change, and so this is always a challenge to the company.
- Describe two (2) reasons why The Coca-Cola Company would choose to protect its soft drink formula as a trade secret, as opposed to using another form of intellectual property protection (for example, a patent).
The Coca Cola Company would prefer to trade secrets over patenting because with trading secrets, there are no costs. It is easier to keep the trade secrets which nobody would know about, rather than have the patent where it can be stolen and have to launch complaints in the courts of law. The trade secret, once kept in safe custody, then there are no chances of it ever getting into competitors who would drag the company into stiff and unnecessary competition. Trade secrets, in the same way, do not require costs in registration. Nobody will ever face legal charges over not registering trade secrets, since it is not necessary.
Another reason why Coca Cola would prefer trade secrets is that trade secrets have no limits in terms of time. The secrets can be kept for centuries and never come to an end. Other intellectual property, such as patenting, would have a time limit after which other persons can have rights to manufacture or process similar products. For owners or the founders of Coca Cola company must have had plans to run a company for an infinite period. Their plans could only succeed by having the company preserved through keeping the trade secrets in a way that nobody could ever have an idea of the formula that manufactures the product of the company.
Part B
- Through Internet research, find and describe three (3) examples of physical or mental problems covered by the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), and three (3) examples of physical or mental problems not covered by the ADA.
The ADA act has outlined the specific mental or physical problems that can be referred to as disabilities in America. Three examples of such problems covered in the ADA act include; disabilities in organs like reproductive, genitourinary, and cardiovascular. The Act is applied in legal cases to solve the dispute. Physical impairment presents an example of the act content. Physical impairment, in the ADA act, has been explained to mean any one or combination of physiological condition or disorder, anatomical loss or cosmetic disfigurement that has negatively affected one or combination of the following systems of the body; neurological, respiratory and musculoskeletal.
The ADA act has not covered some problems. Three examples of cases that are not covered in the ADA are; homosexuality, gender identity and pedophilia. Amongst others in the list, these cannot be termed as disabilities in America as the act excludes them. This act is the foundation of disputes, should a person feel that their rights are violated. It does not include some specific conditions in the category of disabilities. The base of rejection being that such do not in any way bar a person from working in any way (Jerry, 2008). Such conditions are an acceptable and cannot be presented as disability to make a person gain unfair advantage over another.
- Present an argument supporting the position that the ADA has been appropriately interpreted and applied by the courts (in terms of the types of disabilities covered), or that it has not (for example, that it has been overly interpreted and applied to too many types of physical and mental maladies). Provide two (2) supporting facts to justify your position.
The ADA has been in effect and has seen appropriate application, as well as interpretation in law courts. There are numerous cases that have seen the use of this act in order to solve the disputes that came about.
The following cases are facts to support the claim presented above:
- Ronald B. FENTON, Plaintiff, vs. The PRITCHARD CORPORATION and Techsource Corporation, Defendants. Civil Action No. 95-2156-DES.
The matter was brought before the court on the defendants’ motion on sudden judgment (Doc. 49). On September 26, 1995, Ronald B. Fenton, the plaintiff (“Fenton”) filed an initial revised complaint comprising of eight claims set against the defendant (Doc. 24). However, through a pretrial session held afore Magistrate and Judge Ronald Newman on 1996 May eight, the sides narrowed this case down to three specific titles. Consequently, the order addresses the three left over claims alone. They were as follows: (a) the defendant perceiving complainant to have had emotional or mental disability, thus built on the same perception defendant unlawfully ended the complainant in violating the Americans’ Disabilities Act (ADA); (b) the defendant illegally differentiated in contradiction of the complainant due to gender in the violation Title 7, 42 U.S.C. and 2000 e et seq.; and finally (c) the offender deliberately imposed emotional distress on the complainant.
It was seized that Fenton was not incapacitated. The aim of Fenton’s incapacity due is that the offenders saw him as having emotional or mental inability that lend him unable to perform the important job duties of his service with the offender. The view of disability assumed was to reveal that Fenton was risky, a danger to other workers, unsound and so he could “go ballistic”.
- McCauley vs. WINEGARDEN
- In the 1994 May 9 order by district order, the case of the complainant was dismissed for the second time as it was an appeal. The complainant claimed that she suffered from chemical hypersensitivity condition filed a suit under the ADA. The complainant did this in order to get money and relief damages since Georgia court judge did not make provision for a safe environment during her hearing on two occasions when she was in a court. In the appeal, she wanted the case remanded for further proceedings.
Resulting from the ADA regulation, the district court dismissed the complaint of the appellant.
