How can I use someone else’s trade secret?

There are several ways that you can legally use information or technology which someone else claims as their trade secret. Obviously, you can seek the trade secret owner’s permission, and license the trade secret. But regardless of whether or not you obtain the trade secret owner’s permission, you can use any aspect of the trade secret which has been made public (by a publication, or by the product itself being sold, etc.). Related to that, if you legitimately and legally obtain a product, you are entitled to reverse engineer it to discover how it works and how it was put together, even if those are claimed by the manufacturer as a trade secret. Finally, if you can independently create the information on your own you are entitled to use it however you want, regardless of whether the trade secret owner protests. In other words, independent creation is a defense to a claim of misappropriation.