June 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Only seven people in the world knew the secret behind the soft, delicious goodness of Thomas' English Muffins. When one of them tried to leave the company...all hell broke loose. Revisionist History senior producer Ben looks at how the breakfast treat came to be at the center of one of the most important legal cases you’ve likely never heard of.
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Today on the show, I'm sharing part one of a
two part investigation of Thomas's English Muffins, Nooks and Crannies,
the baking secret at the heart of an influential trade
secrecy case that I think is a canary in the
coal mine, a weavil in the flower, signifying a dark
future for all of us. You can listen to Revisionist
History wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hell, let's take a little bite here. One morning, not
long ago, my colleague Bend the daf Haffrey and I
huddled in a small backroom at Pushkin Industries to solve
a mystery.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It like hits the back of your palette. There's like
a outfunk to it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Through the glass wall of the room, we could see
our fellow Pushkin nights working on various prosaic podcasts and
audiobooks while we alone wrestled with an eternal question involving
toasted bread. Just from a sensory perspective, there's a lot
of crunch listen. Also, not forget its size. Yes, because
(01:25):
there's aulmle It's palpable. Breakfast is the meal you make
when you're barely conscious. So the breakfast table is a
super bowl for food companies. Lunch is eating out, Dinner,
if you're lucky, is prepared from scratch. But think about breakfast.
All the day lies before you and you are in
need of sustenance. You want something wholesome but crucially easy.
(01:48):
A little ready made breakfast foods become lifelong habits. Brands
fight tooth and nail for a prime spot at that table.
Many have fought valiantly Jerio's, Lucky Charms, pop tarts, rice crispies.
But there's only one breakfast item legendary enough that when
I take a bite, suddenly I remember from my childhood. Also,
(02:12):
how my father felt about cutting the cross off bread.
I think he I think he viewed that as a
kind of a sign of a is it a kind
of inn, a feat move, a side of moral weeks
moral and sort of a lack of real kind of
fiber when it came to eating your foot or Ben
takes a bite and suddenly he's off for the millions
(02:33):
of time about.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Proost, it does have that kind of like Pristian association
thing like it tastes like this, I remember this taste, Yes,
when I have this, it like it does take me back,
like I am seeing my family's kitchen where we would
eat breakfast, and like the big spread.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Our breakfast mystery comes in packages of six, but they
cannot be eaten right out of the box. Each item
inside must be split in two, then toasted, then buttered
for the magic to work. And oh, the magic works.
I'm talking, of course, about Thomas's English Muffins, the most
(03:12):
iconic breakfast bread of all time.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And for that reason it is nearly a half a
billion dollars a year in sales product. It is the
sinequon on of bread products, baked goods. Yeah, the champ undisputed.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
What sets that Thomas's English Muffin apart from all the others?
It says right there on the package, Nooks and Cranny's.
The recipe for Thomas's English Muffin has been one of
the most closely held trade secrets there is, until allegedly
one baking executive tried to make off with the family jewels.
(03:56):
I'm Malcolm Glawell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my show
about things Overlooked and Misunderstood. Today on the show, Ben
and Alf Haffrey peers into the nooks and crannies of
one of the greatest legal cases you've never heard of.
It's a big story, this Muffin case. Today we're getting
part one. Here's Ben.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I once hired a lawyer who dreams about suing people.
He told me this on a call once. I asked
for proof, and he showed me a video of himself asleep,
very clearly muttering I'll sue you, and something to the
effect of you're going to jail. There were some swears
in there too. My first thought was, this man is
the best lawyer I'll ever have. Second thought, I better
(04:42):
pay him quickly. We were going over an employment contract.
We got to the part about intellectual property, and I
thought the degree to which an employer could punish you
if you ever divulged one of their trade secrets seemed
a little crazy, to which my lawyer replied, well, it
stuck some crannies, and even recognizing I was paying by
the second, I was like, what did you just say?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Why have so many of you switched from toast at
Thomas's English.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Muffin Definitely the granny. It was the.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Nooks, the key to English muffin. Supremacy comes down to
the balance of nooks which catch and pool the melted
butter and the thin, crisp walls of the crannies. But
somehow nooks and crannies are now lawyer shorthand for trade secret.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Why Thomas's the nooks and Cranny's muffin making breakfast better?
Speaker 5 (05:33):
For over one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
In eighteen seventy four, a baker named Samuel Bath Thomas
left England for the United States. Little is known about
his life before he lands in New York, but he
arrived with the recipe in his pocket for what typically
would be called Welsh muffins or crumpets. He cooked them
on a griddle so they'd be crisp on the outside
and dowey yet pockmarked in the inside. In a way
(06:00):
few other breads were Thomas's. Nooks and Crannies took New
York by storm, demands skyrocketed. He opened another bakery, then
it became a corporation. Eventually the words nooks and crannies
became a registered trademark of Thomas's English muffins. You will
note if you look at the bakery shells at your
local grocery store that other English muffin brands live in
(06:23):
fear of this fact. Dave's Killer Bread boasts of butter
catching flavor craters. Trader Joe's has pockets and crevices. Bays
has raised the white flag and left the field entirely
with a claim about packaging now resealable, because all of
them know better than to cross the entity that now
owns Thomas's Group O Bimbo.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
Did you know that your bread is owned by Mexico.
CNBC's Michelle Ruzcoberra caught up with the nation's largest bakery,
Group of Bimbo.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
GROUPO Bimbo International Baking Conglomerate.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Entemens owned by a Mexican bread company, Sarah Lee bought
by a Mexican bread company. Group of Bimbo is just
the biggest baker in the United States. It is the
biggest baker in the entire world.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Bimbo is everywhere. They've taken over half the bread brands
you've heard of in fifty percent of the rest. They've
swept through the US, acquiring one bakery after another.
Speaker 6 (07:21):
It's the first bakery with a big national footprint, and
they plan to be global.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
No one stands in the way of groupo Bimbo, and
in two thousand and nine, at the height of their powers,
they acquired the holy grail of baked goods, the Nooks
and Crannies.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Thomas's English Muffins, owned by a Mexican bread company.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
The secret recipe for Nooks and Crannies brought in about
half a billion dollars in annual revenue to Group of Bimbo.
But then, according to Bimbo, someone tried to steal it.
Can you just tell me the basic facts of the case.
Speaker 7 (07:58):
Well, in this case, I guess we can go through it.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I'm speaking with Louis del Judice, 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
(08:25):
you the lessons of the muffin.
Speaker 7 (08:27):
Do you know with one of the best kept trade secrets?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
And everybody thinks coke, And I'm like, well, Thomas's English muffins,
which we've all grown up on. There's only ten people
in the world that know how to make it Thomas's
English muffin, and people go.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
What, Actually, it's fewer than ten, 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. Louis
(09:00):
was not involved in the case directly, but he studied
it at length. In any telling, he begins by introducing
the defendant, a former Group of Bimbo employee named Chris Boticella.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
Executive officer.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
He's in charge of the entire West Coast, United States,
and he's privyed all this information, all the recipe books,
and all of his other financial information and efficiencies. He
has to sign a non disclosure agreement, but that non
disclosure agreement is only well he's employed.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
It's twenty ten, the year after Group of Bambo acquired Thomas's.
According to documents presented in court, the information required to
produce a Thomas's English muffin is known by only seven
people at the company. It's kept in secret codebooks that
only a few people have access to. Botachella, as a
senior executive, is one of those people. He oversees a
(09:54):
facility in Placentia, California, where the muffins are made. He's
been in the industry since he was sixteen and has
risen through the ranks through sheer skill till finally he's
reached the pinnacle. Bimbo Bakery's executive of almost a decade,
but lately Chris has been unhappy.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
He had said that they had done some cost cutting
and some head cutting, so that sort of left the
bad taste in his mouth. It sounded like from the
one email that's attached to the complaint that maybe had
a little bit of a friction with his manager, you know,
the guy above him. He's just like, you know, there's
a line that literally says, you know, you and I
may not have owecny to I, but we've always known
(10:36):
what was best for the company. So when you read that,
you know, that's a polite way of saying you and
I used to fight a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Chris gets a job offer at hostis famed owner of Twinkies,
one of Beambo's only competitors, but just barely. Hostess had
just gone through bankruptcy. Hostess was a possible target for
BAMBO 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 group of Bimbo wasn't
(11:05):
going to be thrilled about the Hostess of it all,
but he wants to get his year end bonus. He
doesn't leave right away, so.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Now he's sitting all through Q four at his role
with Thomas's getting all the Q four information, all the
look FOWD information for the next year, all the financials
on top of all the other knowledge he had.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Chris signs with Hostess in October. His start date is January.
The weeks stick 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 asks about how to enroll
in health coverage.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Oh, I need cobra, meaning like that's code word for
like I'm going to retire almost right.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
But then Hostess puts out a press release they helped
find out about Hostess press release that he's going to
work in the next two days for Hostess, and Bimbo's like,
oh shit.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
We've got this seventy five year old plus secret of
how to bake Thomas's English Muffins as a half a
billion dollar product and he knows it.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Does Hostess have English muffin?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Not yet?
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Fuck.
Speaker 7 (12:12):
HR calls Chris, No, no, you weren't retiring. You were
going to the hated competitor.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
This is bad.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
HR says, get out.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Now.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
He got to a certain point where he knew too
much and now he's iced out.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
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 Grannies.
We'll be right back. We're going to return to the
nooks and Grannies, I promise, But first we have to
(12:46):
talk about Willy Wonka.
Speaker 8 (12:49):
So I'll start by saying that one of my favorite
books as a kid was Roal Dahl's Charlie on the
Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Genie c Fromer is a weis dean at the New
York University Law School. She's also the Walter J. Deurrenberg
Professor of Intellectual Property Law and the scholar of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 8 (13:08):
When my kids were young, I was rereading the book
to them, and I was struck, now that I was
working in intellectual property, by how much of the story
was actually driven by trade secrets, in that Willy Wonka
had had to shut down his factory because all of
his competitors were sneaking in spies to work there so
(13:32):
they could steal his amazing candy innovations, and he couldn't
tolerate it as a business matter anymore, so he shut down.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
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.
Speaker 8 (13:58):
And so what we learn is that Willy Wonka has
found the magical solution to trade secret theft by having
upa lumpas work in the factory. Why are they the
solution because they don't leave. They live there, so they're
not going to be sneaking out any trade secrets. They're
paid in chocolate. They're happy. Let's not talk about the
(14:22):
Some of the racists and other aspects.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Maybe in vihilation of some employment law, but it's totally.
Genie's insight about the Umpah Lumpas became the seed of
not one but two brilliant articles she wrote, using Willy
Wonka as the skeleton key for understanding trade secrecy. Her
(14:45):
major revelation, Willi Wanka'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.
Speaker 8 (14:58):
Everything from reading about the Mars company blindfolding any repair
people that would come into fixed machines so they wouldn't
see anything else, to spies being put into factories and
guarding against that. So it felt actually very true to life,
and that was a little bit shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Trade secrecy is the part of the law where life
begins to resemble Willy Wonka.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
This is the most secret machine in my entire factory.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
What's it do?
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Can't you see it makes everlasting. God stop.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Did you see 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
(15:53):
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 you don't tell anyone Before I whisper
in your ear. I put up a sign on my
(16:14):
bedroom door saying top secret, keep out trade. Secrecy works
on playground rules.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I can only give them to you if you solemnly
swear to keep them for yourselves and never show them
to another living soul as long as you all shall live, agreed.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Now imagine I'm a major corporation in the real world.
I'm infinitely more powerful than you. I'm Willy Wonka, and
you are a new ballumba. I tell you a secret,
maybe one you don't even want to know. And then
I say, by the way, I have eyes everywhere, And
if you breathe a word of this secret to anyone,
or even look as if you might breathe a word,
(16:55):
I will destroy you. This is the crux of it.
At their best, trade secrets protect valuable intellectual property from
being stolen. But at their worst, they're a powerful tool
for a company that wants to turn an employee into
an oop balloompa. They used to be the easiest way
to turn a human being into an oop ballompa was
(17:16):
a non compete clause, but Janie says that's going away.
Speaker 8 (17:21):
We've been living in a world where fast food workers
have been asked to sign non compete agreements, and you know,
historically people understood non competes as being for a small
number of employees, the highest level employees, the ones with
the access to the most sensitive information, and they're just
being deployed as form contracts for so many workers and
(17:46):
workers with lower incomes in ways that are keeping them
in jobs that they might want to leave and go
somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
A lot of states are banning non competes now, which
is one of the reasons the company might come to
Louis del Judy's IP expert to help identify and protect
their secrets. Could you make that bit in a secret room?
Can you have a black vault in the office. Could
there be a secret codebook?
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Because a trade secret will be the only way to
stop somebody if you really think they're taking something that's
proprietary to your company someplace else, because a non compete
is not going to really be in play.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
But trade secrets can have a dangerous power.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
Sometimes people are just good at what they do, and
they have advantages to continue working in the same industry
because they know that industry and their business has over
claimed things as secrets, and that might prevent them from
taking another job.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Trade secrets are the only intellectual property protection that can
last forever. And because of that permanence and the way
we're geared to think about secrets already, they have a
kind of mystical aura in our secular, disenchanted world. They
are the closest thing we have to magic.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
The authentic Coca Cola formula is written on a tiny
grain of rice kept in an old deacon chest, a
curse on anyone who opens it.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
The most famous ones are the recipes, Coca Cola's secret formula,
KFC's eleven spices, the exact way to create Wriggly's gum.
But actually a whole lot of things can be trade secrets,
software code, financial information. You may know a trade secret
and not even totally realize it, but a good way
to recognize one is the Nooks and Crannies test. This
(19:40):
feels like a good transition to me to Bimbo Bakeries
versus Abouticella. Can you tell me how you came across
the case and how you teach it.
Speaker 8 (19:50):
I know the case through working on trade secret scholarship
and teaching It's it's a more recent classic, I would.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Say, Bimbo Bakeries versus Boutchella. It seemed like every lawyer
I talked to knew about the case. It wasn't a
precedent so much as a legend, a piece of lore,
a fairytale warning about the umpa Lumpa who took the
everlasting Gobstopper out of Willy Wonka's factory and tried to
(20:19):
sell it to a competitor. Like any good fairy tale,
it's a good teaching tool because the moral's clear, Except
then I realized the lessons of this case aren't clear
at all. If somehow you missed the twenty seventeen edition
(20:43):
of the Pennsylvania Super Lawyers magazine, I would encourage you
to look it up, specifically an article titled I Can
Do That about a Pennsylvania super lawyer named Elizabeth Ainsley.
Liz Ainsley is Fearless. She was head of the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania's fraud team. As super Lawyer's magazine puts
it quote. Ainsley has represented whistleblowers in several major cases,
(21:06):
defended and prosecuted high profile RICO cases against law firms
and pharmaceutical companies, defended a major national bank in a
lender liability trial, and successfully defended The New York Times
in a federal defamation trial. Legend, and yet in that
whole article they don't mention a call she got sometime
in January twenty ten regarding a secret recipe for English muffins.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
It was a pretty small budget to begin with, and
I was at a big firm, so there was some
question about whether I could take it or not. But
they let me take it.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
When you say, let you take it? Were you eager
to take it? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (21:44):
It was an interesting case. It was kind of a
David and Goliath situation. I thought people ought to be
free to move from one employer to another, and Chris seemed.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
To be out of his desk. Wow.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
So well, he was a single person and being sued
by a huge racial, global conglomerate with the deep rest
of pockets.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Chris Bodagella, as I have mentioned, was in trouble. Bimbo
Bakeries has just found out that one of seven employees
who knew the secret recipe for their newly acquired and
extremely valuable Thomas's English Muffins was going to work for
a competitor. Group of Bimbo is one of the largest
bakeries in the world. Group of Bimbo bows to nobody.
So within days of Chris's termination, before he starts his
(22:40):
new job at Hostess, attorneys for Bimbo file an injunction
in the Pennsylvania court, which is technically where Thomas's is based,
but mainly it's a way better place for them to
argue the case than California. I would like to read
to you from the factual allegation section of what they filed.
Items one through ten cover the basics of the case,
(23:01):
and then they get to the secret. BBU and its
predecessors have gone to great lengths to keep secret the
recipe and process for making Thomas's English Muffins for over
seventy five years. Thomas's English Muffins are a unique product,
famous for their distinctive nooks and Cranny's characteristics. As a
result of his employment, Bodachella learned trade secrets relating to
(23:24):
the production of the Thomas's English Muffins, including not only
its recipe, but also the equipment necessary for production, necessary
moisture level, and the way the product is baked, which
all contribute to its distinctive characteristics. With the knowledge described
in paragraph thirteen, Bodicella could produce an English muffin that
might look a bit different, but that would nevertheless possess
(23:46):
the distinctive taste, texture, and flavor character that distinguished the
Thomas's English Muffins and that have been the foundation of
the product's success.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
End quote. If you're Chris, this is.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Bad because you have to The judge is coming to
this cold.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Louis del Judice partner trop pepper Lock muffin trade secret enthusiast.
Speaker 7 (24:12):
He knows nothing about what's going on.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
He gets a slice of paper that's, you know, this
emergency order on top of his desk that says, we
need you to act now, and we need you to
stop somebody from getting a job.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
Right. That's a pretty tall order to ask a judge
to do.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
And the judge looks at it and says, Thomas's English muffins, Oh,
the nooks and crandies.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
An immediately recognizable trade secret. Absolutely, you can't let someone
take the secret behind the greatest breakfast product of all time.
The judge grants Bembo's wish. Chris can't join Hostess till
the case is heard. Meanwhile, Grupo Bembo has hired a
computer forensics expert who starts looking through Chris's laptop.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Right after he got off the phone with HR when
they said, hey, we heard the announcement from Hostess. All sudden,
three flash drives ends up getting plugged into the laptop.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
When confronted with this information, Chris told the court he
was practicing for his new job. The court is like,
are you serious?
Speaker 7 (25:06):
I was practicing for.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
My new job out of copy stuff onto a flat
drive and take it off the flat drive and put
it back on the flat He's got, you know your figure.
Speaker 7 (25:14):
He's in his late fifties. He's not good with technology.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
But yeah, So the court found that a little bit
unbelievable that he was practicing.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Chris conceded that it was complicated, but there are mitigating
factors here. First, the rush of it all and the
fact that he'd just met Liz, his lawyer. Then two,
he'd signed a document with Hosts saying that he wouldn't
share any confidential BMBO information. He said he'd stuck around
because he wanted to get his year end bonus and
finished two projects he was working on. But the court
(25:45):
was not convinced.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
There's not a lot of confusion or new law that
was made. It's just everything's really black and white.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
This is the classic version of the case black and white.
Bimbo catches muff and thief, accuses executive of stealing all
sorts of trade secrets, except his lawyer, Liz says, if
you look at those documents, there's no evidence of that.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
I saw all of that stuff and none of it
had anything to do with the products that Bimbo produced.
It had nothing to do with not only English muffins,
but also you know where cupcakes or anything.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Else sandwich thins.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, exactly, Liz says.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
In those documents there's financial information, cost saving strategies, et cetera.
Confidential stuff, but that's in a different category than the
ancient muffin trade secret.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I can actually read it to you this section. Okay.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
So documents and exhibits nine through twenty five include Bimbo's
cost reduction strategies, product launch dates, anticipated plant and line closures,
labor contract information, production strength and weaknesses of many Bimbo bakeries,
and the cross structures for individual products by brand. All
this documentation is highly confidential, even within Bimbo, and would
(27:05):
be extremely harmful to Bimbo in the hands of the competitor.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
You don't think that's sufficient.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
I agree that it was confidential. It's confidential, but it's
not a trade secret.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Bimbo leads with the nooks and crannies and the muffins,
but in all the fine print of their complaint, Naran Nook,
Nora cranny, And yet Liz thinks that's really what this
was all about.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Anytime any executive leaves a big company and goes to
another company, he'll be taking with him the knowledge that
he's acquired of how to be a chief executive or
a senior executive. You can't say that that's a secret
just because he's learned it at one company. I did
think that they wanted to maybe make a statement to
(27:51):
people at Bimbo who might be thinking of stealing the
or peddling the English muffin secret. You know that they
were going to pursue them.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
What anyone on the outside of the case knows is
the result. Chris got crushed. If you search this case online,
you'll see an example made of it on all sorts
of law firm websites. You'll find it in an introductory
textbook for intellectual property law. But in none of those
will you hear whether Bimbo Bakeries was truly able to
hold its most legendary secret up under scrutiny because the
(28:24):
case never went to trial. It was meant to go
to trial, but Liz told me there wasn't money for
a trial. The judge ruled in favor of Bimbo. Hostess
told The New York Times, we have a business to run.
We have to move on. Liz appealed the case and lost.
(28:44):
The ruling stood. Now, I'll grant you that Chris was
not an ideal defendant, but this case had real consequences
for his life.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
After the fact that said, you go anywhere near the
baking industry, you have to tell Thomas's that you're going
to be employed there, and which means Thomas's now would
have the right to go to court and get some
subpoenas and ask questions of the new employer.
Speaker 7 (29:06):
And what is he going to do?
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Like, what is this poor guy, if you want to
take his side of the story, what is this poor
guy supposed to do? Does now he have a set
of handcuffs on he has to continue to work and
can't go anywhere else, which is essentially what happened to him.
The one's going to touch that guy now with a
ten foot pole.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Bimbo didn't respond to her request for comment by the
time we recorded this episode. I tried for months to
reach Chris s Poticella. Finally I found an address and
I wrote him a letter. He wrote me an email
in which he described traveling to the hearing across the country,
even though he lived in California, scrambling to pay for
the appeal and going bankrupt. He writes, quote, you will
(29:48):
never understand the impact that this had on my personal
and professional life. What first grabbed me about this story
was the idea that the nooks and crannies of A.
Thomas's English Muffin had some supercharged legal power. But by
this point, after reporting the story, I realized what this
had meant, at least to Chris. And when I talked
(30:09):
to lu and Genie about the future of trade secrecy,
I saw a world of trade secrets opening up before me,
and once futuristic and medieval, where every company had mystical
code books full of secret recipes, a knook and cranny
for every employee. Nooks and crannies is a shorthand for
(30:32):
trade secret, but the actual trade secret of the nooks
and crannies never came before a jury. I had learned
that this controversy was, to my mind, unresolved, so we
at Revisionist History decided to resolve it. We are trying
to free the muffin, so we're we're reverse engineering the
(30:56):
muffin recipe. WHOA, I kind of love this, Okay, I.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Can't don't tell people.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Next week we attempt to crack the code of the
English muffin.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
My question for you is, is this like you're trying
to create their exact product?
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Can we make this exact?
Speaker 7 (31:14):
English Mum.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Revision's history is produced by me Ben That of Haffrey,
with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Bird Lawrence. This episode was
edited by Julia Barton. Special thanks to Jake Flanagan, Jordan Mannequin,
Greta Cone, and Sarah Knix. Fact checking on this episode
by Kate Ferbey. Original scoring by Louis Scara, Mixing and
(31:39):
mastering by Coom Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
I'm Ben That of Haaffrey.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Today on the show, I'm sharing part one of a
two part investigation of Thomas's English Muffins, Nooks and Crannies,
the baking secret at the heart of an influential trade
secrecy case that I think is a canary in the
coal mine, a weavil in the flower, signifying a dark
future for all of us. You can listen to Revisionist
History wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hell, let's take a little bite here. One morning, not
long ago, my colleague Bend the daf Haffrey and I
huddled in a small backroom at Pushkin Industries to solve
a mystery.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It like hits the back of your palette. There's like
a outfunk to it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Through the glass wall of the room, we could see
our fellow Pushkin nights working on various prosaic podcasts and
audiobooks while we alone wrestled with an eternal question involving
toasted bread. Just from a sensory perspective, there's a lot
of crunch listen. Also, not forget its size. Yes, because
(01:25):
there's aulmle It's palpable. Breakfast is the meal you make
when you're barely conscious. So the breakfast table is a
super bowl for food companies. Lunch is eating out, Dinner,
if you're lucky, is prepared from scratch. But think about breakfast.
All the day lies before you and you are in
need of sustenance. You want something wholesome but crucially easy.
(01:48):
A little ready made breakfast foods become lifelong habits. Brands
fight tooth and nail for a prime spot at that table.
Many have fought valiantly Jerio's, Lucky Charms, pop tarts, rice crispies.
But there's only one breakfast item legendary enough that when
I take a bite, suddenly I remember from my childhood. Also,
(02:12):
how my father felt about cutting the cross off bread.
I think he I think he viewed that as a
kind of a sign of a is it a kind
of inn, a feat move, a side of moral weeks
moral and sort of a lack of real kind of
fiber when it came to eating your foot or Ben
takes a bite and suddenly he's off for the millions
(02:33):
of time about.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Proost, it does have that kind of like Pristian association
thing like it tastes like this, I remember this taste, Yes,
when I have this, it like it does take me back,
like I am seeing my family's kitchen where we would
eat breakfast, and like the big spread.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Our breakfast mystery comes in packages of six, but they
cannot be eaten right out of the box. Each item
inside must be split in two, then toasted, then buttered
for the magic to work. And oh, the magic works.
I'm talking, of course, about Thomas's English Muffins, the most
(03:12):
iconic breakfast bread of all time.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And for that reason it is nearly a half a
billion dollars a year in sales product. It is the
sinequon on of bread products, baked goods. Yeah, the champ undisputed.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
What sets that Thomas's English Muffin apart from all the others?
It says right there on the package, Nooks and Cranny's.
The recipe for Thomas's English Muffin has been one of
the most closely held trade secrets there is, until allegedly
one baking executive tried to make off with the family jewels.
(03:56):
I'm Malcolm Glawell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my show
about things Overlooked and Misunderstood. Today on the show, Ben
and Alf Haffrey peers into the nooks and crannies of
one of the greatest legal cases you've never heard of.
It's a big story, this Muffin case. Today we're getting
part one. Here's Ben.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I once hired a lawyer who dreams about suing people.
He told me this on a call once. I asked
for proof, and he showed me a video of himself asleep,
very clearly muttering I'll sue you, and something to the
effect of you're going to jail. There were some swears
in there too. My first thought was, this man is
the best lawyer I'll ever have. Second thought, I better
(04:42):
pay him quickly. We were going over an employment contract.
We got to the part about intellectual property, and I
thought the degree to which an employer could punish you
if you ever divulged one of their trade secrets seemed
a little crazy, to which my lawyer replied, well, it
stuck some crannies, and even recognizing I was paying by
the second, I was like, what did you just say?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Why have so many of you switched from toast at
Thomas's English.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Muffin Definitely the granny. It was the.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Nooks, the key to English muffin. Supremacy comes down to
the balance of nooks which catch and pool the melted
butter and the thin, crisp walls of the crannies. But
somehow nooks and crannies are now lawyer shorthand for trade secret.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Why Thomas's the nooks and Cranny's muffin making breakfast better?
Speaker 5 (05:33):
For over one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
In eighteen seventy four, a baker named Samuel Bath Thomas
left England for the United States. Little is known about
his life before he lands in New York, but he
arrived with the recipe in his pocket for what typically
would be called Welsh muffins or crumpets. He cooked them
on a griddle so they'd be crisp on the outside
and dowey yet pockmarked in the inside. In a way
(06:00):
few other breads were Thomas's. Nooks and Crannies took New
York by storm, demands skyrocketed. He opened another bakery, then
it became a corporation. Eventually the words nooks and crannies
became a registered trademark of Thomas's English muffins. You will
note if you look at the bakery shells at your
local grocery store that other English muffin brands live in
(06:23):
fear of this fact. Dave's Killer Bread boasts of butter
catching flavor craters. Trader Joe's has pockets and crevices. Bays
has raised the white flag and left the field entirely
with a claim about packaging now resealable, because all of
them know better than to cross the entity that now
owns Thomas's Group O Bimbo.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
Did you know that your bread is owned by Mexico.
CNBC's Michelle Ruzcoberra caught up with the nation's largest bakery,
Group of Bimbo.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
GROUPO Bimbo International Baking Conglomerate.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Entemens owned by a Mexican bread company, Sarah Lee bought
by a Mexican bread company. Group of Bimbo is just
the biggest baker in the United States. It is the
biggest baker in the entire world.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Bimbo is everywhere. They've taken over half the bread brands
you've heard of in fifty percent of the rest. They've
swept through the US, acquiring one bakery after another.
Speaker 6 (07:21):
It's the first bakery with a big national footprint, and
they plan to be global.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
No one stands in the way of groupo Bimbo, and
in two thousand and nine, at the height of their powers,
they acquired the holy grail of baked goods, the Nooks
and Crannies.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
Thomas's English Muffins, owned by a Mexican bread company.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
The secret recipe for Nooks and Crannies brought in about
half a billion dollars in annual revenue to Group of Bimbo.
But then, according to Bimbo, someone tried to steal it.
Can you just tell me the basic facts of the case.
Speaker 7 (07:58):
Well, in this case, I guess we can go through it.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I'm speaking with Louis del Judice, 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
(08:25):
you the lessons of the muffin.
Speaker 7 (08:27):
Do you know with one of the best kept trade secrets?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
And everybody thinks coke, And I'm like, well, Thomas's English muffins,
which we've all grown up on. There's only ten people
in the world that know how to make it Thomas's
English muffin, and people go.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
What, Actually, it's fewer than ten, 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. Louis
(09:00):
was not involved in the case directly, but he studied
it at length. In any telling, he begins by introducing
the defendant, a former Group of Bimbo employee named Chris Boticella.
Speaker 7 (09:12):
Executive officer.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
He's in charge of the entire West Coast, United States,
and he's privyed all this information, all the recipe books,
and all of his other financial information and efficiencies. He
has to sign a non disclosure agreement, but that non
disclosure agreement is only well he's employed.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
It's twenty ten, the year after Group of Bambo acquired Thomas's.
According to documents presented in court, the information required to
produce a Thomas's English muffin is known by only seven
people at the company. It's kept in secret codebooks that
only a few people have access to. Botachella, as a
senior executive, is one of those people. He oversees a
(09:54):
facility in Placentia, California, where the muffins are made. He's
been in the industry since he was sixteen and has
risen through the ranks through sheer skill till finally he's
reached the pinnacle. Bimbo Bakery's executive of almost a decade,
but lately Chris has been unhappy.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
He had said that they had done some cost cutting
and some head cutting, so that sort of left the
bad taste in his mouth. It sounded like from the
one email that's attached to the complaint that maybe had
a little bit of a friction with his manager, you know,
the guy above him. He's just like, you know, there's
a line that literally says, you know, you and I
may not have owecny to I, but we've always known
(10:36):
what was best for the company. So when you read that,
you know, that's a polite way of saying you and
I used to fight a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Chris gets a job offer at hostis famed owner of Twinkies,
one of Beambo's only competitors, but just barely. Hostess had
just gone through bankruptcy. Hostess was a possible target for
BAMBO 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 group of Bimbo wasn't
(11:05):
going to be thrilled about the Hostess of it all,
but he wants to get his year end bonus. He
doesn't leave right away, so.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Now he's sitting all through Q four at his role
with Thomas's getting all the Q four information, all the
look FOWD information for the next year, all the financials
on top of all the other knowledge he had.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Chris signs with Hostess in October. His start date is January.
The weeks stick 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 asks about how to enroll
in health coverage.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Oh, I need cobra, meaning like that's code word for
like I'm going to retire almost right.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
But then Hostess puts out a press release they helped
find out about Hostess press release that he's going to
work in the next two days for Hostess, and Bimbo's like,
oh shit.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
We've got this seventy five year old plus secret of
how to bake Thomas's English Muffins as a half a
billion dollar product and he knows it.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Does Hostess have English muffin?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Not yet?
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Fuck.
Speaker 7 (12:12):
HR calls Chris, No, no, you weren't retiring. You were
going to the hated competitor.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
This is bad.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
HR says, get out.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Now.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
He got to a certain point where he knew too
much and now he's iced out.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
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 Grannies.
We'll be right back. We're going to return to the
nooks and Grannies, I promise, But first we have to
(12:46):
talk about Willy Wonka.
Speaker 8 (12:49):
So I'll start by saying that one of my favorite
books as a kid was Roal Dahl's Charlie on the
Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Genie c Fromer is a weis dean at the New
York University Law School. She's also the Walter J. Deurrenberg
Professor of Intellectual Property Law and the scholar of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 8 (13:08):
When my kids were young, I was rereading the book
to them, and I was struck, now that I was
working in intellectual property, by how much of the story
was actually driven by trade secrets, in that Willy Wonka
had had to shut down his factory because all of
his competitors were sneaking in spies to work there so
(13:32):
they could steal his amazing candy innovations, and he couldn't
tolerate it as a business matter anymore, so he shut down.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
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.
Speaker 8 (13:58):
And so what we learn is that Willy Wonka has
found the magical solution to trade secret theft by having
upa lumpas work in the factory. Why are they the
solution because they don't leave. They live there, so they're
not going to be sneaking out any trade secrets. They're
paid in chocolate. They're happy. Let's not talk about the
(14:22):
Some of the racists and other aspects.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Maybe in vihilation of some employment law, but it's totally.
Genie's insight about the Umpah Lumpas became the seed of
not one but two brilliant articles she wrote, using Willy
Wonka as the skeleton key for understanding trade secrecy. Her
(14:45):
major revelation, Willi Wanka'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.
Speaker 8 (14:58):
Everything from reading about the Mars company blindfolding any repair
people that would come into fixed machines so they wouldn't
see anything else, to spies being put into factories and
guarding against that. So it felt actually very true to life,
and that was a little bit shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Trade secrecy is the part of the law where life
begins to resemble Willy Wonka.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
This is the most secret machine in my entire factory.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
What's it do?
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Can't you see it makes everlasting. God stop.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Did you see 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
(15:53):
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 you don't tell anyone Before I whisper
in your ear. I put up a sign on my
(16:14):
bedroom door saying top secret, keep out trade. Secrecy works
on playground rules.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I can only give them to you if you solemnly
swear to keep them for yourselves and never show them
to another living soul as long as you all shall live, agreed.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Now imagine I'm a major corporation in the real world.
I'm infinitely more powerful than you. I'm Willy Wonka, and
you are a new ballumba. I tell you a secret,
maybe one you don't even want to know. And then
I say, by the way, I have eyes everywhere, And
if you breathe a word of this secret to anyone,
or even look as if you might breathe a word,
(16:55):
I will destroy you. This is the crux of it.
At their best, trade secrets protect valuable intellectual property from
being stolen. But at their worst, they're a powerful tool
for a company that wants to turn an employee into
an oop balloompa. They used to be the easiest way
to turn a human being into an oop ballompa was
(17:16):
a non compete clause, but Janie says that's going away.
Speaker 8 (17:21):
We've been living in a world where fast food workers
have been asked to sign non compete agreements, and you know,
historically people understood non competes as being for a small
number of employees, the highest level employees, the ones with
the access to the most sensitive information, and they're just
being deployed as form contracts for so many workers and
(17:46):
workers with lower incomes in ways that are keeping them
in jobs that they might want to leave and go
somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
A lot of states are banning non competes now, which
is one of the reasons the company might come to
Louis del Judy's IP expert to help identify and protect
their secrets. Could you make that bit in a secret room?
Can you have a black vault in the office. Could
there be a secret codebook?
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Because a trade secret will be the only way to
stop somebody if you really think they're taking something that's
proprietary to your company someplace else, because a non compete
is not going to really be in play.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
But trade secrets can have a dangerous power.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
Sometimes people are just good at what they do, and
they have advantages to continue working in the same industry
because they know that industry and their business has over
claimed things as secrets, and that might prevent them from
taking another job.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Trade secrets are the only intellectual property protection that can
last forever. And because of that permanence and the way
we're geared to think about secrets already, they have a
kind of mystical aura in our secular, disenchanted world. They
are the closest thing we have to magic.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
The authentic Coca Cola formula is written on a tiny
grain of rice kept in an old deacon chest, a
curse on anyone who opens it.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
The most famous ones are the recipes, Coca Cola's secret formula,
KFC's eleven spices, the exact way to create Wriggly's gum.
But actually a whole lot of things can be trade secrets,
software code, financial information. You may know a trade secret
and not even totally realize it, but a good way
to recognize one is the Nooks and Crannies test. This
(19:40):
feels like a good transition to me to Bimbo Bakeries
versus Abouticella. Can you tell me how you came across
the case and how you teach it.
Speaker 8 (19:50):
I know the case through working on trade secret scholarship
and teaching It's it's a more recent classic, I would.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Say, Bimbo Bakeries versus Boutchella. It seemed like every lawyer
I talked to knew about the case. It wasn't a
precedent so much as a legend, a piece of lore,
a fairytale warning about the umpa Lumpa who took the
everlasting Gobstopper out of Willy Wonka's factory and tried to
(20:19):
sell it to a competitor. Like any good fairy tale,
it's a good teaching tool because the moral's clear, Except
then I realized the lessons of this case aren't clear
at all. If somehow you missed the twenty seventeen edition
(20:43):
of the Pennsylvania Super Lawyers magazine, I would encourage you
to look it up, specifically an article titled I Can
Do That about a Pennsylvania super lawyer named Elizabeth Ainsley.
Liz Ainsley is Fearless. She was head of the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania's fraud team. As super Lawyer's magazine puts
it quote. Ainsley has represented whistleblowers in several major cases,
(21:06):
defended and prosecuted high profile RICO cases against law firms
and pharmaceutical companies, defended a major national bank in a
lender liability trial, and successfully defended The New York Times
in a federal defamation trial. Legend, and yet in that
whole article they don't mention a call she got sometime
in January twenty ten regarding a secret recipe for English muffins.
Speaker 5 (21:30):
It was a pretty small budget to begin with, and
I was at a big firm, so there was some
question about whether I could take it or not. But
they let me take it.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
When you say, let you take it? Were you eager
to take it? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (21:44):
It was an interesting case. It was kind of a
David and Goliath situation. I thought people ought to be
free to move from one employer to another, and Chris seemed.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
To be out of his desk. Wow.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
So well, he was a single person and being sued
by a huge racial, global conglomerate with the deep rest
of pockets.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Chris Bodagella, as I have mentioned, was in trouble. Bimbo
Bakeries has just found out that one of seven employees
who knew the secret recipe for their newly acquired and
extremely valuable Thomas's English Muffins was going to work for
a competitor. Group of Bimbo is one of the largest
bakeries in the world. Group of Bimbo bows to nobody.
So within days of Chris's termination, before he starts his
(22:40):
new job at Hostess, attorneys for Bimbo file an injunction
in the Pennsylvania court, which is technically where Thomas's is based,
but mainly it's a way better place for them to
argue the case than California. I would like to read
to you from the factual allegation section of what they filed.
Items one through ten cover the basics of the case,
(23:01):
and then they get to the secret. BBU and its
predecessors have gone to great lengths to keep secret the
recipe and process for making Thomas's English Muffins for over
seventy five years. Thomas's English Muffins are a unique product,
famous for their distinctive nooks and Cranny's characteristics. As a
result of his employment, Bodachella learned trade secrets relating to
(23:24):
the production of the Thomas's English Muffins, including not only
its recipe, but also the equipment necessary for production, necessary
moisture level, and the way the product is baked, which
all contribute to its distinctive characteristics. With the knowledge described
in paragraph thirteen, Bodicella could produce an English muffin that
might look a bit different, but that would nevertheless possess
(23:46):
the distinctive taste, texture, and flavor character that distinguished the
Thomas's English Muffins and that have been the foundation of
the product's success.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
End quote. If you're Chris, this is.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Bad because you have to The judge is coming to
this cold.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Louis del Judice partner trop pepper Lock muffin trade secret enthusiast.
Speaker 7 (24:12):
He knows nothing about what's going on.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
He gets a slice of paper that's, you know, this
emergency order on top of his desk that says, we
need you to act now, and we need you to
stop somebody from getting a job.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
Right. That's a pretty tall order to ask a judge
to do.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
And the judge looks at it and says, Thomas's English muffins, Oh,
the nooks and crandies.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
An immediately recognizable trade secret. Absolutely, you can't let someone
take the secret behind the greatest breakfast product of all time.
The judge grants Bembo's wish. Chris can't join Hostess till
the case is heard. Meanwhile, Grupo Bembo has hired a
computer forensics expert who starts looking through Chris's laptop.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
Right after he got off the phone with HR when
they said, hey, we heard the announcement from Hostess. All sudden,
three flash drives ends up getting plugged into the laptop.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
When confronted with this information, Chris told the court he
was practicing for his new job. The court is like,
are you serious?
Speaker 7 (25:06):
I was practicing for.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
My new job out of copy stuff onto a flat
drive and take it off the flat drive and put
it back on the flat He's got, you know your figure.
Speaker 7 (25:14):
He's in his late fifties. He's not good with technology.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
But yeah, So the court found that a little bit
unbelievable that he was practicing.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Chris conceded that it was complicated, but there are mitigating
factors here. First, the rush of it all and the
fact that he'd just met Liz, his lawyer. Then two,
he'd signed a document with Hosts saying that he wouldn't
share any confidential BMBO information. He said he'd stuck around
because he wanted to get his year end bonus and
finished two projects he was working on. But the court
(25:45):
was not convinced.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
There's not a lot of confusion or new law that
was made. It's just everything's really black and white.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
This is the classic version of the case black and white.
Bimbo catches muff and thief, accuses executive of stealing all
sorts of trade secrets, except his lawyer, Liz says, if
you look at those documents, there's no evidence of that.
Speaker 5 (26:10):
I saw all of that stuff and none of it
had anything to do with the products that Bimbo produced.
It had nothing to do with not only English muffins,
but also you know where cupcakes or anything.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Else sandwich thins.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, exactly, Liz says.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
In those documents there's financial information, cost saving strategies, et cetera.
Confidential stuff, but that's in a different category than the
ancient muffin trade secret.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I can actually read it to you this section. Okay.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
So documents and exhibits nine through twenty five include Bimbo's
cost reduction strategies, product launch dates, anticipated plant and line closures,
labor contract information, production strength and weaknesses of many Bimbo bakeries,
and the cross structures for individual products by brand. All
this documentation is highly confidential, even within Bimbo, and would
(27:05):
be extremely harmful to Bimbo in the hands of the competitor.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
You don't think that's sufficient.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
I agree that it was confidential. It's confidential, but it's
not a trade secret.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Bimbo leads with the nooks and crannies and the muffins,
but in all the fine print of their complaint, Naran Nook,
Nora cranny, And yet Liz thinks that's really what this
was all about.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Anytime any executive leaves a big company and goes to
another company, he'll be taking with him the knowledge that
he's acquired of how to be a chief executive or
a senior executive. You can't say that that's a secret
just because he's learned it at one company. I did
think that they wanted to maybe make a statement to
(27:51):
people at Bimbo who might be thinking of stealing the
or peddling the English muffin secret. You know that they
were going to pursue them.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
What anyone on the outside of the case knows is
the result. Chris got crushed. If you search this case online,
you'll see an example made of it on all sorts
of law firm websites. You'll find it in an introductory
textbook for intellectual property law. But in none of those
will you hear whether Bimbo Bakeries was truly able to
hold its most legendary secret up under scrutiny because the
(28:24):
case never went to trial. It was meant to go
to trial, but Liz told me there wasn't money for
a trial. The judge ruled in favor of Bimbo. Hostess
told The New York Times, we have a business to run.
We have to move on. Liz appealed the case and lost.
(28:44):
The ruling stood. Now, I'll grant you that Chris was
not an ideal defendant, but this case had real consequences
for his life.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
After the fact that said, you go anywhere near the
baking industry, you have to tell Thomas's that you're going
to be employed there, and which means Thomas's now would
have the right to go to court and get some
subpoenas and ask questions of the new employer.
Speaker 7 (29:06):
And what is he going to do?
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Like, what is this poor guy, if you want to
take his side of the story, what is this poor
guy supposed to do? Does now he have a set
of handcuffs on he has to continue to work and
can't go anywhere else, which is essentially what happened to him.
The one's going to touch that guy now with a
ten foot pole.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Bimbo didn't respond to her request for comment by the
time we recorded this episode. I tried for months to
reach Chris s Poticella. Finally I found an address and
I wrote him a letter. He wrote me an email
in which he described traveling to the hearing across the country,
even though he lived in California, scrambling to pay for
the appeal and going bankrupt. He writes, quote, you will
(29:48):
never understand the impact that this had on my personal
and professional life. What first grabbed me about this story
was the idea that the nooks and crannies of A.
Thomas's English Muffin had some supercharged legal power. But by
this point, after reporting the story, I realized what this
had meant, at least to Chris. And when I talked
(30:09):
to lu and Genie about the future of trade secrecy,
I saw a world of trade secrets opening up before me,
and once futuristic and medieval, where every company had mystical
code books full of secret recipes, a knook and cranny
for every employee. Nooks and crannies is a shorthand for
(30:32):
trade secret, but the actual trade secret of the nooks
and crannies never came before a jury. I had learned
that this controversy was, to my mind, unresolved, so we
at Revisionist History decided to resolve it. We are trying
to free the muffin, so we're we're reverse engineering the
(30:56):
muffin recipe. WHOA, I kind of love this, Okay, I.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Can't don't tell people.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Next week we attempt to crack the code of the
English muffin.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
My question for you is, is this like you're trying
to create their exact product?
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Can we make this exact?
Speaker 7 (31:14):
English Mum.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Revision's history is produced by me Ben That of Haffrey,
with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Bird Lawrence. This episode was
edited by Julia Barton. Special thanks to Jake Flanagan, Jordan Mannequin,
Greta Cone, and Sarah Knix. Fact checking on this episode
by Kate Ferbey. Original scoring by Louis Scara, Mixing and
(31:39):
mastering by Coom Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
I'm Ben That of Haaffrey.
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