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Overview |
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If
you commercialize a patented product or process,
you will usually have to disclose information to
employees or contractors that you learned from your
research, in order to have a viable business. The
manufacture of an integrated circuit, for example,
was patented and is now well known.
Yet many of the exact processes and techniques required
to make products meet high quality and reliability
standards cannot be patented. This type of knowledge
is very valuable, and is often the result of expensive
trial-and-error and research. In these cases, you
might be able to receive additional protection by
declaring the information a trade secret.
Patent protection grants you exclusivity for twenty
years. Trade secret protection can last indefinitely,
but it does not protect against a third party discovering
and using the same technology if the discovery is
made by fair and honest means. In other words, in
the integrated circuit example, nothing stops an
engineer from doing his or her own independent research
to discover the optimal way to produce quality chips.
Using the information learned on the job for a chip-maker
might, however, become a trade secret. |
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