Perfume remains a ‘secretive trade,’ but US cleaner giant moves to transparency.
The Guardian
Amy Westervelt
September 29, 2014
Clorox is working to disclose allergens in its products’ fragrances. Will others will begin to abolish their own ‘trade-secret status,’ or even remove allergens altogether?
Hundreds of years ago, expert perfumers in France would handcraft exotic, top-secret blends to be used in the spritzes, soaps and powders of the world’s elite. In that context, applying trade-secret status to the fragrance industry made a lot of sense. In today’s world – where any company can hire a chemist to reverse engineer their competitor’s fragrance – it has become more a question of consumer protection than intellectual property rights.
