How do you protect your innovations?

Are you a company director? Your company invests heavily in R&D, but you don't know how best to protect your innovations?

Protecting one's innovations is often a major issue for companies with large R&D budgets.

To shed some light on the subject, let's focus today on innovation protection!

Innovation: patents and utility certificates

To begin with, you can protect your innovations through patents.

In effect, they are a form of industrial property title designed to offer a 20-year operating monopoly for a specific technical innovation, to the company that developed it. Such patents can also be registered abroad.

Note that a patent only protects an object or product, not an idea or other aesthetic creation.

In addition, to be protected by a patent, the innovation must meet a certain number of conditions.

The latter must be :

• A technical solution that provides an answer to a technical problem
• Completely new
• Developed from an activity considered "inventive".
• Considered to be both manufacturable and usable

Any company holding a patent can intervene to prevent the manufacture or even use of its innovation, without prior authorization.
Such a patent application must be filed with the INPI (Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle) as soon as possible.

Note that it is possible to transform your patent into a utility certificate.

Like patents, utility certificates aim to protect an innovation, and give the company that developed it a 6-year monopoly on its use in France.

Beyond this difference in duration, the operating protocol is similar, except that a utility certificate cannot be converted into a patent.

Ensure internal security and secure exchanges

Secondly, it is possible to protect an innovation by internal company processes: by optimizing internal security and securing exchanges.

It is important to emphasize that protecting an innovation begins with securing the invention internally.

To this end, several procedures must be put in place to ensure the security of your searches:

• Strengthening the protection and control of the circulation of information relating to the R&D department
• The drafting and signing of special contracts requiring all employees taking part in the project to refrain from disclosing any information relating to the research.
• Imposing a non-competition undertaking on the management team, notably through an exclusivity clause.
• Securing all physical and system access to the company's R&D department

It is also imperative to reinforce the security of exchanges with subcontractors for the completion of certain stages.

To protect your innovations from external collaborators, it is essential to ensure :

• A high level of confidentiality in relations with external collaborators
• Locking up all partnership contracts for any third parties involved in the company's R&D projects.

To do this, it is necessary to introduce certain clauses:

• A clause guaranteeing the confidentiality of all external parties
• A clause specifying the conditions of appropriation of rights relating to companies
• And potentially, a clause providing for a transfer of the rights of the part performed by a subcontractor to the company, if applicable. 

Other tools for protecting innovation

There are many other tools available to protect the development of innovations:

• "The Soleau envelope provides dated proof of the development of an idea or other concept.
• Registering models or other designs to secure the appearance of your product
• Trademark registration makes it possible to secure any distinctive sign of a company's products or innovations from its competitors.
• Copyright provides protection for any graphic, artistic or other software creation.

It's important to take every step to protect all your company's innovations.