The main aim of a defensive publication is to put an invention in the public domain and thus establish a prior art reference. In most countries, a patent cannot be granted for an invention which has already been published, or for an invention which is obvious in light of relevant prior art. One of the most common and straightforward reasons for publishing a defensive disclosure is therefore to create prior art describing an invention in order to prevent others from later obtaining a patent on the same or a closely-related invention.
Different strategies have been devised to optimize the management of intellectual property within a company by means of defensive publications. Many companies decide to publish inventions which are not worth the expense required to pursue patenting, when they want to ensure that they can continue using the involved technology and to prevent others from getting a patent on the same invention. Publishing an invention does not grant any monopoly, but can ensure that no other company can later patent the same invention.
Other companies choose to publish inventions immediately after having filed a patent application on it in order to avoid having to fight an interfering application filed by a third party for the same invention.
Until recently, there was no really suitable channel for publishing inventions rapidly, cost-effectively and with limited administrative constraints.
Traditional technical papers published in a journal usually imply long delays and the risk to have the text rejected or amended by the reviewers. Internet publications are easier to achieve, but it may be difficult or even impossible to prove later on which information was published and on what date exactly.
We have recognized those drawbacks and offer now the possibility to publish on our site documents with extensions .doc, .pdf or .txt for example. The documents are time-stamped, signed and notarized to ensure that document integrity and publication date can be verified in the future, should the need arise. They are furthermore stored in a database made directly available to examiners of the European Patent Office, so as to maximize the chances of having those documents cited in search reports for subsequently filed patent applications of third parties.
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Click here to publish an invention or to perform a search on already published inventions.
