Although patent applications must enable others to implement their claimed concepts, and describe the best manner known to any of the named inventors at the time for doing so, as your company improves, replaces, and optimizes those implementation details, it has the opportunity to protect them as trade secrets for an indefinite period of time. These vital trade secrets can add tremendous value to any license your company offers to others who seek to commercialize the patented concepts.
Even though the content of most patent applications is eventually published, many related trade secrets can be maintained.
In particular, each U.S. patent application is required to describe the implementation details only:
- For its claimed concepts, rather than all valuable related concepts it mentions;
- In the best way known to the named inventors alone, rather than to the company as a whole;
- As known on the effective filing date of that patent application, rather than as learned afterwards; and
- Sufficiently to enable a person having ordinary skill in the art to barely (vs. optimally) implement each claimed concept without substantial further research, experimentation, or training.
Furthermore, a patent application is not necessarily required to include all the valuable research data that was gathered to identify what customers actually want, to prove the technical and/or commercial viability of the claimed concept, or to decide what implementation approaches failed, did not work well, or were otherwise unsuitable and/or concerning, such as due to considerations relating to profitability, safety, quality, aesthetics, regulations, legal risks, timing, and/or strategy, etc.
So as your company learns, improves, and optimizes how to implement and commercialize the innovative concept, it can protect that knowledge, data, and information as trade secrets. In fact, for each of its publicized innovative concepts, your company can discover and develop tons of related and extremely valuable trade secrets both before and after patent protection has been timely sought. If carefully managed, your company can indefinitely maintain those trade secrets, potentially even if patent protection is denied, or long after patent protection has expired.