How To Really Protect Your Invention
In an article posted on Ohio.com, the official website of the Akron Beacon Journal offers some advice for inventors that is misguided, or limited, at best.
If you have an invention or idea, it is essential that you protect it or run the risk of losing your rights and any future rewards. Here is what you need to do:First, start a diary/journal in a bound notebook. Include the date of the invention (when the idea was initially conceived) and a description. This is important in connection with filing for a patent in the future as the United States is a ''First-to-Invent'' country. Keep the journal updated as you develop prototypes, make modifications, etc.
Second, prepare a one-page nondisclosure agreement. If you want to tell anyone (relatives, friends, plant personnel, others), the receiver of the information should sign the agreement and keep the invention confidential. This way, you keep your idea protected and have a record of when and to whom the information was disclosed.
Now, that's all well and good, if you think you're "protecting your invention" by papering your relatives, friends and co-workers with non-disclosure agreements, to set up a cause of action in contract law for breach of that agreement if those people closest to you somehow disclose that which they have agreed specifically not to disclose, and you can prove those facts in court. Good luck getting "your future rewards" that way.
And the notion that keeping a secret diary/journal in a bound notebook (including the date of the invention) will "protect your rights" as the "first to invent" is delusional. Who's to say when those dated entries were actually written in your bound notebook? Can you imagine how you might prove those entries were written on the dates specified? And how is anyone else to be dissuaded from applying for a patent for an invention noted in your diary/journal notebook, however nicely bound.
In the real world, what is required to really protect an invention from anyone else gaining patent rights to that idea in the United States, is irrefutable evidence that the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent (US Patent Act, Section 102a). That is "prior art" in the language of patent law. In this modern digital world, there are accepted methods of recording creative work that could be regarded as prior art to prevent someone from getting a patent on something you've already invented.
The IP.com Creative Registry is a web-based registry that allows you to upload your documents and creative work for legal safeguarding. IP.com digitally fingerprints and date-stamps your work while placing it into a private archive for your personal access. IP.com then publishes the fingerprint and date into the public domain as a testament to the existence of your work. Your actual document is NEVER exposed to anyone else, yet you have irrefutable proof of its content at the precise time it was safeguarded!
When your invention is defined sufficiently that you'd like to ensure that USPTO examiners discover your "prior art" when examining any application for a patent that should not be granted to anyone else because of the disclosure of your prior art, you may want to publish a technical disclosure of the invention in the Prior Art Database, which is searched by the USPTO examiners and many other patent agencies around the world as part of the patent review process. Defensive publishing is a widely-used tactic as an alternative to the expensive patent application process, which an inventor should consider as part of a comprehensive innovation management strategy with the advice of a patent attorney retained to consider the law and facts of specific cases.
