Glen Belvis, 49, an intellectual property lawyer at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione in Chicago, how smart companies keep things under wraps.
When should companies use patents and when should they protect their inventions by calling them trade secrets?
A patent will allow you to stop someone who independently creates your invention. The trade secret only protects you from having someone directly steal your secret. You want to stay with patents for those things that are easy to copy. You go for trade secrets for things in your commercial process that give you a competitive advantage — a way of reducing the cost of manufacturing the product, a source of supply, your list of customers.
