In your business you have developed a new process, method or product that gives you significant advantage against your competition. Great! No?

After meeting with patent agents and/or lawyers you learned that you creation is not patentable, may be the subject matter is not considered as patentable, may be the invention does not meet the requirements of “new”, “inventive step” and/or “industrial applicability” according to the Law No. 20-00 concerning Industrial Property of the Dominican Republic.

Wait, it is not the end of the story!

Luckily, patent registration is not the only way to protect valuable and innovative developments; you could easily turn to trade secret.

Trade secret protection is just as it sounds, you need to keep the secret in order to have the protection. The minimum conditions are:

• The information contained in the trade secret must not be generally known or simply accessible to others; and
• The owner of the trade secret must make reasonable efforts to maintain the secrecy of the information.

By doing these simple steps you will be protected if someone without your authorization (1) uses the trade secret; (2) reveals the trade secret; and/or (3) obtains the trade secret by unlawful means or contrary to the honest commercial usage.

Spanish version | versión en español