As a creative, an entrepreneur or a business owner, you have likely heard of several terms that refer to intangible but crucial components of business. This may include copyright, intellectual property (IP), or trade secrets.
All of these hold importance in your growth and success. In particular, the protection of your IP, copyrights and trade secrets will help. So how are your trade secrets protected, exactly?
No paperwork or filing
The World Intellectual Property Organization answers many questions about trade secrets. One of the most frequently asked questions regards the protection of trade secrets. They state that it differs from the protection of patents, which require you to register first.
Instead, trade secrets have no sort of official procedure or other formalities that you need to go through to protect them. This also means that there is no “time limit” on the protections of a trade secret, unlike the expiration of a patent or copyright. In essence, the only way a trade secret’s protection ends is if the secret is legally acquired or otherwise discovered and then leaked to the public.
Potential hurdles
Due to the lack of costs and formal document filings, many companies and businesses enjoy trade secret protection above other forms of IP protection. However, for information to be a “trade secret”, it must meet certain conditions. Meeting these conditions can sometimes cost you a lot of money. You may even struggle to achieve what you need to comply with the conditions. Thus, you should look carefully into your options before selecting trade secret protection as your method of choice.