How to protect one's inventions

An invention must answer three criteria:
- it must be new, i.e. nothing identical forever be accessible to knowledge from the public,
- its design must be inventive,
- it must be likely to be used or manufactured in an industrial way.
To protect a product, an improvement made to a product, an innovating process, you have several solutions:

The patent
The patent is a title of industrial property which confers on its holder an exclusive right of exploitation on the patented invention. It gives has its holder the right to prohibit with any unauthorized third the manufacture and the marketing of the invention such as defined in the patent. A patent must bring a technical solution to engineering problems. The duration of the patent is 20 years as from the registration day of the request.
“Are patentable the new, implying an inventive step, and suitable inventions for industrial application” (Article L.611-10 of CPI).

The Certificate of utility
Also called “patent runs”. They are the same formalities that for the patent, it is about a patent for which the search for anteriority was not required within 18 month after the date of filing. It is subject to the same rules of patentability but lasts only 6 years. The certificate of utility is interesting to protect from the inventions of short durations.

The search for anteriority is an essential element before any step of patent filling to make sure that already does not exist and to position its patent in complement of existing (on the level of the claims). This research must be entrusted to a specialist.
To check the innovation of an invention before its deposit does not constitute a legal requirement. But not to do it is risky.
The secrecy
The secrecy makes it possible to protect the processes, formulas job-mix or other technical elements not patented and the products whose diffusion does not reveal their composition or their operation. Protection is unbounded in time as long as the secrecy exists. Caution: the secrecy is not an exclusive right. You should be constituted evidence in the event of litigations.

Other types of protection

Drawing or model
The style and the shape of the products of a company are signs of recognition and notoriety. Creations of form enjoy a great facility of protection, they are covered by the royalty and can profit from the second protection by a deposit carried out with the INPI (National institute of property).

Registered trademark
The mark is a means for the company of differentiating its products and services from its competitors.
There exist various types of distinctive signs:
- the trademark which identifies the products manufactured by the company,
- the brand name which is applied by the distributor of the product,
- the mark of service which represents the activities of a service provider.
The mark can take varied forms (a word, a name, a slogan, figures, letters…).
By depositing your mark with the INPI, you indefinitely obtain a monopoly of exploitation on the renewable French territory for 10 years
.
In France, there is no official sign of recognition. One can make follow the mark of an asterisk which returns at the foot of the page to a mention of the type: “registered trademark”.

Trade secret
The trade secret is a protection which results from the not-disclosure of the innovation, that it is technical, commercial or organisational.

You can choose to protect your creation only by the trade secret:
- because the high cost of the protection of the patent type is sometimes not easily redeemable;
- the disclosure of the idea by publication of the titles of industrial property can involve counterfeits;
- the inadequacy with the criteria of obtaining a patent.
A trade secret not being protected and not revealed, it is important to be able to establish, if, the proof of the anteriority of creation. A secret cannot be effectively kept that if it is shared among a limited number of people.

The clause of confidentiality
To protect your company, it is advised to insert in your work contracts a “clause of confidentiality” or “not-competition” where will appear the following mentions:
- secrecies concerned more particularly,
- people entitled to receive information,
- duration of prohibition.
The clause of confidentiality urges the employee not to reveal any confidential information related to the lines of business. The disclosure of information is prohibited:
- by all means of communication that it is: oral examination or written,
- that it is inside or outside the company.

The obligation of confidentiality is optional but it does nothing but confirm the obligation of discretion which is implied in any work contract and is binding to the employee. This last is held with the professional secrecy for all the confidential information of which it could be informed within the framework of its functions, and this, as well with respect to the customers as of the competitors but also of the others paid.
Namely: it is not essential on all, “even in the absence of stipulation express” and this, even after the rupture of the work contract.