Ben-Nadav Hafri
speaker
333 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Ben-Nadav Hafri’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm speaking with Louis Del Giudice, partner at the major law firm Troutman Pepperlock, in a conference room high above Manhattan. This is where my lawyer sent me when I asked about cranny law. Louis is an expert in intellectual property. He says a lot of people come to him to determine if they have their own trade secrets.
And he tells them, sit down, my friends, and let me teach you the lessons of the muffin.
Actually, it's fewer than 10, but we'll get to that. Trade secrets are one of the pillars of IP protection in the United States, along with patents, trademarks, and copyright. But unlike the others, a trade secret never expires. And the muffin case is one of the best examples of a trade secret's power and how to protect it. Louie was not involved in the case directly, but he studied it at length.
In any telling, he begins by introducing the defendant, a former Grupo Bimbo employee named Chris Botticella.
It's 2010, the year after Grupo Bimbo acquired Thomas'. According to documents presented in court, the information required to produce a Thomas' English muffin is known by only seven people at the company. It's kept in secret code books that only a few people have access to. Botticella, as a senior executive, is one of those people.
He oversees a facility in Placentia, California, where the muffins are made. He's been in the industry since he was 16 and has risen through the ranks through sheer skill until finally he's reached the pinnacle. Bimbo Bakery's executive of almost a decade. But lately, Chris has been unhappy.
Chris gets a job offer at Hostess, famed owner of Twinkies, one of Bimbo's only competitors, but just barely. Hostess had just gone through bankruptcy. Hostess was a possible target for Bimbo acquisition, but then Bimbo would have owned almost every baked good on the planet, and at that point, where's the fun?
Chris probably knew that Grupo Bimbo wasn't gonna be thrilled about the Hostess of it all, but he wants to get his year-end bonus, so he doesn't leave right away.
Chris signs with Hostess in October. His start date is January. The weeks tick by. Chris finally announces he's leaving Bimbo, but he doesn't say he's going to a new job. Given his long tenure, his colleagues probably assume he's retiring. According to court documents, he asked about how to enroll in health coverage.
Does Hostess have an English muffin? Not yet. Fuck. HR calls Chris.
This is bad. HR says get out now.
Chris is walked out of the building. He has no idea what's coming for him. Least of all, that he's about to be swallowed up by the nooks and crannies.
We're going to return to the nooks and crannies, I promise. But first, we have to talk about Willy Wonka.
Jeannie C. Frommer is a vice dean at the New York University Law School. She's also the Walter J. Durenberg Professor of Intellectual Property Law and a scholar of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
For those in need of a refresher, in the book, Wonka's factory has started back up, but nobody understands how. Nobody ever goes in. Nobody ever comes out. This is why it's so exciting when Charlie gets the golden ticket to go see the inside of the factory. Nobody sees the inside of the factory.
He may be in violation of some employment law, but it's... Totally. Jeannie's insight about the Oompa Loompas became the seed of not one, but two brilliant articles she wrote, using Willy Wonka as the skeleton key for understanding trade secrecy. Her major revelation? Willy Wonka's paranoia, the spying and extreme secrecy, was totally justified. It was essentially based on a true story.
This is just part of being in the candy industry.
Trade secrecy is the part of the law where life begins to resemble Willy Wonka.
People love secrets from a very early age. It's why Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic children's story. It's not just the candy. It's the secrets. The world is already full of things you can't understand when you're little. And now someone's going to share the most special true knowledge behind it all. But secrets are also dangerous. If I tell you a secret, it means I trust you.
It binds us together. But it also alters the balance of power between us. You know something I don't want other people to know. That puts me at risk. So I need you to know it's a secret. I tell you, don't tell anyone. Before I whisper in your ear, I put up a sign on my bedroom door saying, top secret, keep out. Trade secrecy works on playground rules.
Showing 101–120 of 333 · page 6 of 17
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