How do you protect your innovations?

Are you the manager of a company? Does your company invest heavily in R&D, but you don't know how best to protect your innovations?

Protecting innovations is often a major concern for all companies with large Research and Development (R&D) budgets.

To enlighten you, today we're focusing on the protection of innovations!

Innovation: Patents and utility certificates

First, you can protect your innovations through patents.

They actually represent a form of industrial property title aimed at offering a 20-year monopoly on the exploitation of a specific technical innovation to the company that developed it. Such a patent can also be filed abroad.

It should be noted that a patent only protects an object or product, not an idea or other aesthetic creation.

In addition to that, for an innovation to be protected by a patent, it must meet a number of conditions.

The latter must be:

• A technical solution to solve a technical problem.
• Completely new
• Developed from an activity considered "inventive"
• Considered as able to be manufactured but also used

Any company holding a patent can take action to prohibit the manufacture or even the use of its innovation, without obtaining prior authorization.
Such a patent application must be filed with the INPI or National Institute of Industrial Property as quickly as possible.

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

The certificate of utility, like the patent, aims to protect an innovation, and allows the company that developed it to have a monopoly on exploitation in France for a period of 6 years.

Aside from this difference in duration, the operating protocol is similar, except that a certificate of utility cannot be transformed into a patent.

Ensure internal security and secure your exchanges

Secondly, you can protect an innovation through internal company processes: by optimising internal security and securing exchanges.

It's important to emphasize that the protection of an innovation should start with securing the invention internally.

To do this, several procedures need to be implemented to ensure the security of your research:

• Strengthening the protection and control over the flow of information related to the R&D department
• The drafting and signing of specific contracts, aimed at imposing the non-disclosure of information relating to this research for any employee participating in the project
• Taxation for the management team of a non-compete agreement, particularly through an exclusivity clause
• Securing all physical and system access relating to the company's R&D department

It's also crucial to beef up security for transactions with subcontractors when handling certain steps.

Indeed, it is essential to protect its innovations from external collaborators by ensuring:

• Establishing strong confidentiality in its dealings with external collaborators
• Locking down all partnership agreements for any third party involved in the company's R&D projects

To do this, you need to put certain clauses in place:

• A clause aimed at guaranteeing the confidentiality of any external party involved with the company
• A clause specifying the conditions for the appropriation of rights relating to companies
• And potentially, a clause providing for a transfer of rights from the part performed by a subcontractor to the company, if applicable. 

Other innovation protection tools

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

• The Soleau envelope aims to provide dated proof of the development of an idea or other concept.
• Filing designs or other drawings to protect the look of your product
• Trademark registration helps protect any distinctive signs of a company's products or innovations from its competitors.
• Copyrights offering protection to any graphic, artistic, or software creation

It's important to take all necessary steps to protect the integrity of your company's innovations.