Before deciding whether a given innovative concept justifies patenting, that innovation must be properly described in writing. Doing so logs and tags the innovation as a trade secret and allows the innovation to be consistently and repeatedly evaluated for potential patenting by your company.
Here are some helpful tips for your company’s innovators to document their innovations:
- If working on paper, use ink rather than pencil.
- Avoid erasing. Instead, strike-through any needed deletions, being sure to add the date and a note about the revision.
- Don’t leave big areas of blank space in the working documents. Instead, cross them out, removing the possibility of later modifications.
- Use audit logs, time stamps, and modification dates for electronic records.
- Make sure that all original drawings, notebooks, data, samples, records, etc., no matter how simple, are dated, signed by the innovator(s), properly witnessed, and carefully preserved.
- Select witnesses who are not co-creators or co-inventors, but who are qualified to understand the content of the innovation documentation and are likely to be available to testify in the event of a dispute.
Note that these tips are equally applicable to trade secrets that will be the subject of a patent application and those that won’t. By properly documenting and storing a record of your company’s trade secrets, you obtain well-secured written evidence of when, where, why, and how each trade secret was created and who within your company created it. Such evidence can help your company thwart anyone who obtains that trade secret via improper means from asserting that they already knew it before they improperly obtained it from your company.