The biggest success of secret protection can be attributed to coca-cola, which still keeps its secret recipe today.

 

Inventors, however, do not always think to protect their rights and realize, sometimes too late, the importance of these protections.

 

Save a secret creation in the blockchain can allow you to be protected in several forms:

 

1) Right of prior use

 

It concerns anyone who has developed a secret invention. Prior use right allow anyone who has developed a secret invention to continue using or selling it despite it has been patented by someone else.

 

The owner of a patent is supposed to have a monopoly of exploitation on all the zone of deposit except against the inventors who can prove to have created this invention before and to have kept it secret.

 

The principle of previous personal possession applies in 69 states such as Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland or England.

 

You can find the list of member state protecting prior user right here : http://www.wipo.int/scp/en/exceptions/

Usually, this right is used by inventors who do not have the means, the desire or the time to file a Patent for their inventions and prefer protecting this way.

 

 

2) The trade secret

 

Contrary to patents, trade secrets can be protected without registration. This is particularly attractive because after protection, a trade secret can offer an unlimited period of time protection. 

 

In general, an information protected as a trade secret must be:

• commercially valuable because it is secret,

• be known only to a limited group of persons, and

• be subject to reasonable steps taken by the rightful holder of the information to write it down, timestamp it and keep it secret. 

 

Tilmestamping a trade secret can be done on a blockchain. 

 

The unauthorized acquisition, use or disclosure of such secret information in a manner contrary to honest commercial practices by others is regarded as an unfair practice and a violation of the trade secret protection.

 

 

3) The know-how

 

The know-how is made up of information of all kinds presenting an economic value such as for example:

 

A manufacturing process not yet patented,

A marketing technique

A management method

A cooking recipe

 

The information is kept confidential and requires those who want to have access to it to pay.

 

These three protections can only apply to inventors who can justify the date of their creation.

 

Indeed, it is certainly important to keep it secret, but also to prove that you created the invention before its potential competitor.

 

Blockchain offers the possibility of time stamping quickly and at low cost each step of the creative process, which not only formalizes the invention but also grants it protection for each evolution.

 

In addition, this same evidence will be very useful when filing a Patent.

 

In order to preserve the confidentiality of your secrets, Soleauchain offers you the possibility of communicating to it only the hash of the file that you wish to save. This will make your proof in the blockchain alone unreadable for you who can access it through a link and / or the unique identifier of the transaction.