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When you become familiar with the laws surrounding patents and trade secrets, the question soon arises, “Which is better – patent protection or trade secret protection?” The answer depends not just on what you’re trying to safeguard, but can also hinge on its economic value and longevity, your financial objectives and the marketplace you’re in. Here’s how to take these issues into account as you evaluate your situation.

Differences Between Patents and Trade Secrets

The first issue to consider is whether the intellectual property (”IP”) you want to protect qualifies for either patent or trade secret protection, or both or neither.

To qualify for utility patent protection, your IP must be legally patentable. The law allows patents for machines, methods, processes and compositions of matter, among other things. Specifically ruled out are ideas, concepts and scientific truths. Your IP must also be new, useful and non-obvious. Failing any of those requirements, you can’t obtain a utility patent. It may be possible to qualify for a design patent, though, if your IP is a new and non-obvious ornamental design applied to an article of manufacture as was explained in https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/43137/20200108/why-inventhelp-is-a-great-resource-for-new-inventors.htm article.

For trade secret protection, your IP must be information that is valuable because it is not generally known, and you must take reasonable actions to prevent it from being revealed.

In general, if your IP is patentable it is also likely eligible for trade secret protection as an alternative. But if you choose to patent your discovery, you give up the ability to maintain it as a trade secret. When the patent is issued it becomes public information and the invention is no longer secret.

On the other hand, anything that cannot be legally patented may be protectable under trade secret laws if keeping it secret creates an economic advantage for its owner.

Term of Protection

A utility patent gives its owner the exclusive right to benefit from the invention for 20 years. Thereafter, anyone can make, sell or use it. Protection for a design patent issues for 14 years. During the protected period, the patent owner can legally enjoin anyone from using the invention without permission. Even someone who invents or discovers it completely on their own cannot legally use it once it’s been patented as you can see from https://www.latinpost.com/articles/143207/20200108/why-new-inventors-need-assistance-from-inventhelp.htm.

A trade secret, though, has no expiration date. The most famous trade secret example is Coca Cola, which has managed to keep its soft drink formula a trade secret for more than 120 years. Had they patented the formula, it would have entered the public domain 100 years ago, and perhaps ended their business.

A trade secret does lose its protected status, however, when it becomes generally or publicly known. A company whose trade secret is illegally disclosed may be able to claim damages from the offending party, but once out of the bag, the cat can never be put back in.

Trade secret protection also does not prevent anyone from developing the identical information completely on their own, and using it to their benefit or making it public.

A patent keeps out the competition during the patent’s term (twenty years from filing). That means that you can charge higher prices for the patented product, and make more money. Stated in another way, you get “monopoly profits”. This is the government’s reward to you for making the invention in the first place.

Why would the government want to reward me with a patent?

Research and development is costly. A lot less R&D gets done when these costs cannot be recovered.

An invention which you never make is an invention which is never used by you (during the term of the patent) to make monopoly profits. An invention which you never make is an invention which is never used by your competitors (after the patent expires) to make ordinary profits. These missing profits, both yours and theirs, never get taxed. The government doesn’t like this as you can read from https://inspirationfeed.com/how-inventhelp-can-help-you-protect-your-invention/.

At the same time, direct government funding of all R&D is unworkable. Suppose that the government had spent billions of tax dollars to develop (say) new automotive technology. The automobile companies would get rich, and would pay somewhat higher taxes. Yet these billions of tax dollars which were paid to the automobile companies would now no longer be available to be spent somewhere else — perhaps education, or health care. Yes, we would all have somewhat nicer automobiles. We would also all have less-educated children, and sicker elderly parents.

It is far better — politically, practically, and morally — to do two things. First, encourage the private funding of R&D. Second, arrange for the R&D to be ultimately paid for by the people who benefit from it. Let the people who buy a new car every two years be the ones to pay the higher sticker prices — higher sticker prices which are needed to fund R&D. Let the rest of us (with the older automobiles) have better-educated children, and healthier elderly parents — things which we’d choose to have rather than having somewhat nicer automobiles.

This private funding of R&D is easy to encourage. Every automobile company will invest heavily in R&D when it knows that the other automobile companies can’t steal the resulting technology. A patent prevents this kind of theft as described in https://www.oddee.com/how-inventhelp-can-assist-new-inventors/ post.

What is true of R&D is also true of your R&D. Your invention, if patented, will — at least on average — make money for the government as well as for you. The government therefore grants you a patent.

The surface of a road should not be sliding because the tires are seized but. It must be clean and uniform.

The texture necessary to prevent slippage is communicated to the surface at the time of its construction. If the surface becomes too smooth due to use, with several treatments its primitive texture is regenerated.

Flexible roads carry a layer of asphalt or “macadam” (tarmac). Asphalt is prepared with relatively large stones, embedded in tar.

The “macadam” is made with smaller stones, in contact with each other and attached to the road by a layer of tar. Although the “macadam” is cheaper, the elastic resistance of the asphalt adds to the total resistance of the road. On the other hand, asphalt is more water resistant. A careful investigation of the smallest details improves the quality of road surfaces. The choice of stone to use is very important. Certain types of stone wear easily and do not provide a good grip on the surface.

The correct tar thickness is also very important: if it is small, the surface stones soon separate; if it is too large, the surface is sticky in summer. Ice on roads is a very dangerous threat, mainly in sharp bends and slopes. Those places that represent an excessive danger can be heated in winter, to prevent ice from forming on its surface. For this, an electrical resistance network is available at its base, which works by automatic methods.

Once we have the materials ready, a special vehicle distributes the concrete over the metal mesh structures, just after another machine will slowly pass over eliminating lumps and water pockets that are produced in the concrete, leaving it well leveled while it hardens.

In any case, this smoothing work will be completed manually by the road operators. To avoid the slippage that we have mentioned before, the road surface is scratched with a rake creating grooves that will give the tires an extra grip. Once this is done, simply apply asphalt layers as necessary.

In India, IRB Infrastructure with Virendra Mhaiskar as their chairman is the leading road construction company that uses the latest road building technology and machinery. They are building some of the most modern roads and highways in the world.