Should I patent or just trademark a sports drink formula?

[geol19]

I am almost done developing a drink formula and I cannot decide whether to try and patent it or leave it be for now and just trademark the logo, name, etc. I talked to some lawyers and they keep suggesting the whole nine yards which would cost me over $8,000 dollars! I looked into it more and found legalzoom.com and it seemed to be a simpler and much cheaper way to do both. BUT after reading into it, the process can become costly depending on what you try to patent and most of the descriptions I read pertain to objects and inventions. So, do I bother with a patent for a drink recipe? Please help!

[gall]

I am almost done developing a drink formula and I cannot decide whether to try and patent it or leave it be for now and just trademark the logo, name, etc. I talked to some lawyers and they keep suggesting the whole nine yards which would cost me over $8,000 dollars! I looked into it more and found legalzoom.com and it seemed to be a simpler and much cheaper way to do both. BUT after reading into it, the process can become costly depending on what you try to patent and most of the descriptions I read pertain to objects and inventions. So, do I bother with a patent for a drink recipe? Please help!

Trademarks do not protect formulas. For example, Coca-Cola is a trademark. The recipe for Coke is top secret. The trademark does not prevent me from reverse engineering the Coke recipe and releasing my own soda that tastes the same. However, the trademark does prevent me from coming out with a soda called "Ron's Coca-Cola" which would cause confusion to consumers thinking that my soda is related to the actual Coca-Cola Company.

A patent might protect the composition of your sports drink, assuming that the composition is novel and nonobvious. For example, here's a Gatorade-related patent issued in 1992.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=9U4dAAAAEBAJ&zoom=4&dq=gatorade&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=gatorade&f=false

Using the Coke example, another alternative to patents is to simply maintain your recipe as a trade secret like Coke or KFC has with their recipes. In a patent, you have to disclose your recipe, which you may not want to do.