The Intellectual Property world offers us opportunities to protect our inventions. However, it is often confusing on what type of protection should an inventor seeks for his invention. The most commonly known strategy to protect your invention is through patents. But, is it always patenting the right approach for all types of innovations? When we delve into strategies to protect our technical information, we will come across trade secrets and defensive publications. Let us have a better understanding of patents, trade secrets, and defensive publications to help you choose what is best for your innovation and technology.
Patents
Patents are a form of intellectual property rights that prevents others from manufacturing, selling, or marketing your design or product. They are a boon to individual inventors where they can license their products to obtain the maximum monetary benefits. Patents are tangible assets to an organization. A strong patent portfolio is bound to attract investors towards start-ups.
As alluring as it sounds, in reality, patents do have its setbacks. They are valid only for a period of 20 years. There are chances that your patent might expire even before you reap the amount spent on inventing and patenting your invention. Also, the exclusive rights of the patent can be tricky at times. The exclusivity is mostly confined only to the patent claims.
Patent protection is often territorial. Furthermore, the cost of filing a patent application and maintaining a patent is quite expensive.
With the number of patent applications sky-rocketing every year, obtaining a patent is time-consuming. Patent holders often do not effectively commercialize their patents. Hence, many patents are forgotten over a long time.
Trade secrets
A piece of confidential information that provides a competitive edge to a business is called a trade secret. We can consider any technical information such as a process, test data, computer programs or designs, and commercial information such as the list of clients, marketing strategies, and distribution methods as trade secrets. An organization can also protect a combination of elements as a trade secret. Organizations with information that are of excellent market value always opt for trade secrets to prevent disclosure of such information.
Unlike a patent, trade secrets do not have a specific validity period. They are valid as long as the information remains a secret. A trade secret, as the name states do not disclose any information. Hence, it remains confidential, leaving no room for exploitation by competitors. This off the record piece of information blows an air of mystery around the product. Companies use this as an effective marketing strategy to attract more consumers.
Trade secrets can also become effective immediately, sparing the tedious, time-consuming process of patent filing. But an organization should adopt extensive and stringent measures in place to protect their trade secret.
However, we cannot prevent others from designing a similar product or methodology if they land on it through their own market analysis, R&D, or reverse engineering process. Besides, once the secret is out, it can no longer be protected. Nowadays, in a rapidly changing world, possessing a trade secret is turning dangerous because employees keep moving from one organization to another. Small scale employers are often left wondering if their trade secret is actually a secret.
Defensive publication
Some organizations consider defensive publication as a more economical way of protecting information. It is a method where an organization or individual publishes the details of an invention in a public domain. This system will establish the invention as prior art, thereby preventing others from filing a patent for the invention.
We can consider the information in research journals, white papers, product literature, press releases, and theses that are accessible to the public as public domains for defensive publishing.
Defensive publications are inexpensive means of blocking patents. They also serve as an immediate alternative to protect any improvements in your already patented technology.
In the defensive publication, your invention becomes prior art.
The timing of defensive publishing is very critical. If one publishes too soon, the competitors will get a glimpse of the strategy of your organization. They may end up entering the market well in advance before you complete your invention. Whereas, if you publish it too late, there are chances of your competitor already filing a patent. Your publication will not be considered prior art owing to the late publication date. Besides, patent examiners will not find all forms of the public domain for defensive publication. Hence, one has to be very careful in choosing the public domain where they wish to publish.
Patents, trade secrets, and defensive publishing are all opportunities to protect your innovation and technology. It solely depends on the inventor to decide on what to pursue, depending upon the nature of the data he wishes to protect. However, there are always intellectual property experts to help you decide on what is best for your innovation.
