CI and Patent

Question 1

what is CI?

Answer 1

if recipient of information is under any confidentiality obligations, he may be sued for breach of confidence

Question 2

what are the conditions for CI?

Answer 2

1. necessary quality of confidence in the information
2. circumstances surrounding the receipt of information, including those affecting the conscience of the recipient to bind him to confidentiality
3. unauthorized used of the information by the recipient (to the detriment of the plaintiff)

Question 3

what information can be protected?

Answer 3

information that is not in the public domain:
1. commercial information
2. private
3. government information

Question 4

what information cannot be protected?

Answer 4

1. information that has lost its quality of confidentiality, become widely known
2. trivialities and vague information

Question 5

what are the circumstances in which CI can be disclosed?

Answer 5

1. recipient has agreed to keep confidentiality (verbal agreement or NDA)
2. a fiduciary relationship with the plaintiff (lawyer-client)
3. where the conscience of the recipient is affected

Question 6

what is an example of an unauthorized use of CI by recipient?

Answer 6

1. develop product
2. make money

Question 7

what are the remedies?

Answer 7

1. bring a civil action against the party breaching confidence
2. successfully prove the 3 elements of test of breach of confidence
3. seek damages or accounts of profits and/or injunctions from the court

Question 8

what if the difference between CI protection and patent protection?

Answer 8

1. under law of confidence, newly developed technology may be protected as trade secrets
2. since a patent application would be published (18 months from priority date) , information in the application would no longer enjoy CI

Question 9

what are the advantages of CI protection?

Answer 9

1. not being limited in time, can continue indefinitely long as long as secret is not revealed to the public
2. keeping secrecy involves no registration cost
3. does not require compliance with any formalities

Question 10

what is patent?

Answer 10

patent is a set of rights to prevent others from commercially exploiting the invention without consent

Question 11

how does it benefit inventors?

Answer 11

1. it is a limited time monopoly
2. gives the inventor a right to be named

Question 12

how does it benefit the public?

Answer 12

1. encourage innovations and exploitations
2. disclosure of technical information - knowledge gain
3. technologies will fall into public domain in time to come

Question 13

reasons for patent?

Answer 13

1. incentivise creativity and research and development
2. in return the patentee has to disclose details of the invention for publication

Question 14

what are the conditions for patent?

Answer 14

1. industrial application - must have utility
2. novelty - no prior art
3. inventive step - involves an inventive step that is not obvious to a person skilled in the art
4. sufficiency and clarity - specification of an application in which a skilled person in the art can replicate it

Question 15

what is pct?

Answer 15

1. it is an application not a patent
2. administratively convenient - allows applicant to seek patent protection in several countries at the same time by filling in 1 application in 1 place, in 1 language, with 1 set of fees
3. applicants get an international search report and an international preliminary report which serves to indicate patentability of invention
4. applicants have more time (30 months) to decide if they want to proceed with an application in each of the designated countries while preserving priority date