Trade Secrets 

Secrets are the soul of business

Sometimes, keeping a secret is the best protection

In general, any corporate information that adds competitive value to your business can be considered as a trade secret. Therefore, you may hold a trade secret if you have developed an industrial, manufacturing, or commercial secret and protected it – thus making it possible for the unauthorized use of this information by anyone other than the owner to be regarded as the illegal practice of unfair competition.

Learn how

How do trade secrets work?

A trade secret is no more than information with a competitive advantage over third parties. It grants its owner maximum protection against unfair competition, industrial espionage, and other acts that violate contractual or confidentiality obligations.

Trade secrets involves sale systems, distribution methods, consumer profiles, production processes, advertising strategies, lists of suppliers and customers, and manufacturing processes.

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Advantages

Strategic advantages of trade secrets

It is important to understand that trade secret protection includes a number of key advantages, such as:

Contrary to what happens with patents, protection is not limited to a period of time.

They do not involve compliance with government authority formalities.

They do not involve registration costs.

They have immediate effect.

Trade Secrets

Process

To ensure the best trade secret management for your business you can rely on Inventas three-step process:

Given the very sensitive nature of trade secrets, Inventa is highly-experienced in confidentiality agreement negotiation and guarantees complete confidentiality on our part.

Your questions

Our answers

Trade secrets concern any information that provides a competitive advantage to a company and may involve sale systems, distribution methods, consumer profiles, production processes, advertising strategies, lists of suppliers and clients, and manufacturing processes.

When it comes to advantages, trade secrets offer very responsive and qualitative criteria for any business:

  • Contrary to what happens with patents, protection is not limited to a period of time.

  • They do not involve compliance with government authority formalities.

  • They do not involve registration costs.

  • They have immediate effect.

However, Inventa will always assess the situation of every client, on an individual basis, to determine whether the subject in question should be a trade secret, patent, or other kind of industrial property rights.

Unlike patents, trade secrets are protected without registration, procedural formalities, or any time limitations, which results in a special interest from small and medium companies. However, it is essential to check whether the trade secret meets the requirements to be considered one, such as:

· The information must be a secret (limited to small circles responsible for dealing with it).

· Its confidentiality must hold commercial value.

. Appropriate procedures must have been carried out by its owner to keep it secret (which may entail, for example, confidentiality agreements).

If you have a trade secret, the ideal thing to do is protect it, since this way it will be protected from being made public. However, it is important to realize that your trade secret will be more valuable if it meets the following principles:

. Impossibility to be patented, if it doesn't meet this requirement.

. Assurance that it has been kept a secret for a long period of time.

. The existence of a relationship with the manufacturing process and not directly with products.

. The existence of a patent application in pending status.

Inventa’s teams work directly with trade secrets and are able to provide you with total assistance throughout the process of protecting your secret. It is important to remember that trade secrets involve employers, mediators, vendors, and everyone who directly works with the information - hence the need to set tools and methods in place to reduce the risk of disclosure.

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