Sharing Your Work Publicly Without Giving Away Your Inventions

Why it matters

Many countries require that an invention be new at the time of filing, and a public disclosure by the company itself may count against that. U.S. law provides a limited grace period in some circumstances, while many other jurisdictions offer little or none. A talk given in one city can affect filing options worldwide.

Common ways inventions slip out

• An engineering blog post explaining how a hard problem was solved.
• A conference talk with architecture diagrams.
• Source code pushed to a public repository.
• Detailed sales or partner presentations shared without confidentiality terms.
• Product demos at trade shows.

A simple pre-publication review

The fix is not to stop publishing. It is a short review before anything technical goes out:

• Does this describe how something works, or only what it does?
• Has anyone recorded the underlying invention?
• Should counsel consider a filing before this goes public?
• Can the same point be made with less technical detail?

Make it routine

The companies that handle this well build the review into their existing approval steps for talks, posts and releases. It usually takes a few minutes per item and saves the much harder conversation about what was lost.

When the review does flag something, the next step is to capture it in an invention record and bring it to patent counsel, who can advise on timing and options for your situation.