Did you know that large companies do not immediately file for patents when new product ideas are developed? They take advantage of a little known provision of the patent law to establish pre-patent protection.
The good news: You can use that same provision to protect your ideas! This is it … the U.S. Patent Law protects the first to invent – NOT the first to file for a patent.As opposed to the very costly and time-consuming patent process, “first to invent” protection is easily and inexpensively established. It is done through documentation of your idea (much like keeping a diary) in a specially constructed logbook. Companies call them “laboratory notebooks” and they’ve used them to protect ideas since the patent law was established in 1790; but you have to do it right for your ownership to be validly demonstrated.
