By: Ted Barthel, Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek S.C.

Your company has created a new innovation. Now you would like to protect this intellectual property (IP) asset and use it to create value for your business. Four types of IP protection exist: copyright, patent, trademarks, and trade secrets. Which type of protection is best for your IP asset? The answer is found in the type of protections provided by patents and trade secrets.

A patent is a government-sponsored right to exclude others from making or using your invention. This right is conveyed in an issued patent, which is a published, publicly available document. A patent has a life span of 20 years from the filing date of the patent application. Obtaining a patent is rigorous, time-consuming, and expensive.

A trade secret is proprietary company information that achieves its value from not being known to the public and that a company takes steps to maintain as a secret. A famous example of a successful trade secret is the formula for Coca-Cola, a trade secret for more than 100 hundred years.

A patent protects an invention by making it known publicly (vis-à-vis the published patent). A trade secret, on the other hand, protects an asset by keeping it out of public knowledge. Patent protection is limited in duration. Conversely, a trade secret can theoretically last forever--i.e., as long as the information is kept secret. Keep in mind, however, that a trade secret can be lost in an instant if the secrecy is lost or if a competitor develops the IP asset on its own. Once a trade secret is lost, it is lost forever.

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