Can you keep a trade secret?
The balance between protecting ideas and shackling employees is a delicate one.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The protection of trade secrets has long been a game with high stakes.
PHOTO: PIXABAY
Tim Harford
He didn’t go to sample the Dolcetto d’Alba, I’m fairly sure of that. John Lombe’s mission was industrial espionage. He travelled to Piedmont with the goal of learning the Piedmontese art of spinning silk into strong yarn.
Nobody was likely to teach him – that would have been illegal – so instead he waited until everyone was asleep, and sketched diagrams of the spinning machines by candlelight. In 1717, Lombe brought them back to Derby in England and there, by the fast-flowing Derwent, he and his half-brother, Thomas, built the first large factory in the world.
