The Intellectual Property Information Page does not deal extensively with trade secret law. The details of this law, the protection provided, and the liability for unauthorized use or disclosure depends upon the State within which the reader resides. The law varies from State to State. However, the reader should know that a trade secret may consist of any formula, pattern, device or compilation of information which is used in one's business and which gives him an opportunity to obtain an advantage over competitors who do not know or use it. (Restatement of Torts §757)
Rights in trade secrets protect commercially important information from being used in breach of confidence and from being obtained, for example, by bribing anothers employees. However, trade secret law is not effective against anothers obtaining the information by reverse engineering (copying a product found in the marketplace) or independent discovery.
For most inventions, copyright offers little potential because it generally will not protect useful inventions. It does, however, offer some protection for software. Unlike trade secrets, copyrights can be used to stop others from copying products acquired in the market. Still, they suffer serious limitations. First, copyrights cannot stop others from selling very similar works that are independently created. (However, the more widely a work is available, the more difficult it is for later sellers to establish independent origin.) A more serious limitation is that, while copyright can be used to prevent others from copying or closely imitating software, it cannot be used to prevent them from writing a different program to execute the same functions or get the same result. Finally, copyright is of little value in preventing another's copying and use of data no matter how expensive it may have been to collect. Copyrights are the least expensive to obtain and preserve. They arise automatically upon creation of proper subject matter. Registration is necessary in the U.S. only if one needs to bring suit; it is usually unnecessary elsewhere even for that purpose. However, for both domestic and foreign copyright owners, early U.S. registration confers important remedial advantages. The usual registration fee is $20.00, and the registration process rarely warrants legal assistance.
Utility patent protection is better than copyrights in most ways. Although of doubtful use for protecting data, patents can protect a much wider range of inventions and can be used to prevent sale of works independently invented. Nevertheless, for inventions such as industrial processes, patents may not be effective. If others can learn to practice an invention from reading a patent, but the patentee cannot easily determine if it is being used, a patent will not be worth much. In such circumstances, trade secrets may be preferred. Finally, patent protection costs thousands of dollars in ever-increasing government fees alone. It is expensive to obtain, maintain and enforce. Unlike the situation with copyrights, patents must be obtained in each country where protection is desired, and costs abroad may be even higher than here -- particularly if translations are required. This means that few inventions would warrant patent protection in more than a small fraction of possible countries. Still, sophisticated firms clearly regard some foreign patents as worth far more than they cost.
