Intellectual Property Protection System for Partisan

Preferred language style: English (U.S.)
Stephen (S) is the founder of Partisan, a company developing a new generation of joystick and computer games. The joystick has fewer moving parts than in products currently on the market. Because it allows for precision of touch of the players S believes that it will open up opportunities for the development of a new generation of games. S is also working on developing these new games. S thinks joystick will make a big impact when it hits the market. However, S and his colleagues are yet to develop a prototype and needs to gain funding for his purpose.

The company has expanded rapidly over the last twelve months. The company now has twelve full-time employees and six others who come in from time to time. In the last two months ten of the twelve full-time employees have started-prior to this they were working on the project while continuing to work in their other employment. S is particularly happy that Jon (J) has come on board as the engineer. J previously worked for Optel, a big telecommunications company. He was happy to leave that company because the paper work required by that company’s lawyer to satisfy the company’s intellectual Property Management rules has become overwhelming. He also thought it was a bit rough that the company demanded that IP developed at home on private projects is also owned by the company.

Recently, William (W), a work experience participant, completed a stint at the company. W did not work on anything that S considers to be part of the company’s core intellectual property, however W did say on finishing with the company that he had learned so much while with the company that he would have no problems getting a job with Gravbel, a competitor of Partisan. This made S think about the protection of Partisan’s intellectual property. He has not until this point considered this issue at all – but he does know that the company has considered intellectual property that it must protect.
Requirement
1) Each student should produce an Intellectual Property Protection System documents.
2) This documents is a requirement for all start-ups and thus will be valuable resources for everyone to undertake
3) The assignment should be submitted as a professional student and be formatted according to the usual report structure.
Total Words: 5000 words
Course Textbook Readings
P. Latimer, Australian business Law, (CCH 2005)
Please use Australian English Format.

Developing an Intellectual Property System for the Company

Introduction

Intellectual property rights (IP Rights) are certain rights given over property whose ownership arises from intellectual labour.  For a business organisation including a company, enterprise, etc, IP would mean a lot in terms of investments, resource-spending, profits, etc.  Several works whose development and creation has great commercial or industrial value such as inventions, literary works, artistic works, symbols, designs, integrated circuits, marks, etc, come under the purview of intellectual property.  There are several types of intellectual property including

1.      Patents – They are inventions given for products, processes, apparatus, etc.

2.      Trademarks – Symbols, letters, words, combination of words, shapes, logos, smell, any other combinations which is distinctive of the good and products of one trader

3.      Design – Helps to improve the appearance/aesthetics of the goods manufactured

4.      Copyrights – Original creative, artistic, dramatic, musical, film works

5.      Integrated circuits – Protects the three dimensional configuration of integrated circuits

6.      Plan breeder’s rights – TO protect the new plant varieties

7.      Confidential information or ‘Trade secret’ – Protection of confidential information belonging to an organisation (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

In this paper, I would be dealing about patents and trade secret information as they would be concerning the above mentioned case and are of great importance to the organisation.

Patents

Patents are rights given for inventions that fulfil the criteria of new, non-obviousness and usefulness.  It may be given to a device, substance, process, method, apparatus, etc.  There should be an inventive step involved in that it should have not appeared obvious to a person skilled in that art.  A patent would exclude others from making, selling, distribute, marketing the particular product or process.  The rights of the person claiming the patent does not automatically arise, but has to go through an intense process of registration, opposition, etc.  All the applications of the patent are examined in the patent office if they fulfil the requirements of the patent criteria.  Several types of inventions including creative works, business methods, plans, plant varieties, mere discovery of natural substances or elements, schemes, mathematical models, etc, cannot be patented.  The invention should have some real-time and practical use.  It should be able to produce something in the industry or utilised by the industry (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

Many inventions may not get patented if the patentee or the employers of the organisation go public with the invention too soon.  Within the organisation, the details of the invention can be discussed, but it has to be kept confidential to ensure that the patent can maintain its new and non-obviousness criteria.  Any prior art (or previous knowledge) in the existing field, should be described in the patent application and compared to the technology of the invention.  The invention should show a clear benefit or advantage over the prior art.  A patent is usually given for a period of twenty years from the data of registration.  The patentee has to maintain the patent by paying the annual fee and also working the patent (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

When a patent is being administered, no person has the right to do anything with the invention without the owner’s consent.  The patents are admissible in the courts and are enforceable by the jurisdiction.  An attempt to violate the patent would constitute an infringement, and can be taken up in the court of law.  A patent can be opposed by any member of the public during the pre-grant stage or the post-grant stage (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

A Patentee has the right to work the invention himself, or appoint another person to work the invention.  This is applicable in the form of permission or a license.  The other parties would be working the invention on mutually agreed terms and conditions.  Besides, the owner of the invention also has the right to sell the invention to any other person.  Once, the duration of 20 years comes to an end, the patent protection would end, and the invention would come into the public domain.  The owner of the invention would no longer have exclusive rights with the invention (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

Patents help to protect inventiveness and innovative spirits.  They recognise creative and intellectual labour.  A patent would be very lucrative and rewarding for the inventor as he would financially and monetarily gain from his intellectual efforts.  They also have rewarding benefits for the public as the quality of human life would improve (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

One of the important aspects of the patenting concept is the requirement to fully and sufficiently disclose to the public the details of the invention so that the invention can be worked.  If the patentee does not reveal information so that the patent cannot be worked sufficiently, then the patent need not be granted.  This total disclosure of patents is required to ensure that the information is protected and can be worked by a licensee or assignee.  Patents would contribute towards the technical knowledge of the world.  Once the technical knowledge is developed, it can be furthered so that humanity can be benefited.  Future generations may use the patented ideas to develop new ideas for the benefit of humanity (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

The entire process of granting the patent is complex and takes a lot of time.  The patentee has to file the patent application before the patent office.  He has to give several types of information including title of the invention, the field in which the invention is directed, the background and the description of the invention, diagrams, plans, drawings, statistics, etc.  The language of the patent application should be simple, lucid and understandable by the common man.  The patentee should exactly claim the met and bound of the invention which would include the portions which he/she needs protection and the portions which he/she needs no patent (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

The patent is usually granted by the patent national office or regional office.  For example, in Australia, the Australian Patent office (a national organisation grants the patents), whereas in Europe, the European Patent Office grants it.  The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is a system of filling patent application in several countries that have signet the treaty.  The Patents would be granted in the signatory nations, but issues would need to be settled in each individual nation (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

In case an invention before being registered (provisionally or permanently) is brought out into the public-domain, and then it would lose its novelty and non-obviousness criteria, and hence be denied a patent application.  Such an invention would be considered being the same as a prior-art, and hence having no difference with previous technology would result in failure of granting the application.  This is the single most factor for which organisations are required to keep the inventions and advancements in technology a secret.  However, in several organisations, staff housing advanced technical information related to the patent, may actually leak the information illegally to other organisations or may provide other organisations with vital information regarding the patent.  To protect such information, the trade-secret or ‘confidential information route is available.  This would hold the signatory liable if they leak out vital information of the organisation (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

Trade Secret or Confidential Information

            Many companies consider trade secret as an important strategy of their IP policy.  Several types of information including technology in the nascent stages, pre-grant information, proprietary information, financial information, medical information, insurance details, business strategies, etc, are well-protected by the trade secret route.  Usually confidential information is considered to be a sort of an agreement between the employers and the employees regarding release and disclosure of vital information of the company.  It limits the employees from releasing information to others.  IF the company faces damages due to the disclosure of such information, then the individual who has signed a confidentiality agreement would be held liable and pay for the damages.  An organisation that is dealing hugely with technical information should make sure that the information is satisfactorily protected by the use of the non-disclosure agreements.  Some companies would be considering the trade secret route, as the information can be kept confidential perpetually.  However, it is important to note that when an employee leaves an organisation, some amount of trade secrecy would be lost.  The trade secret agreement is an important document that demonstrates the agreement and the terms and conditions agreed upon.  A trade secret protection route would also seem to be beneficial when the technology in the product would be difficult to decipher.  It is important to note that when a trade secret route is selected, others would not be stopped from making the same invention, and using it for the general use of the public.  The invention can be made and used independently.  When more people know certain confidential information, it would be difficult to keep the trade secret (IP Australia, 2008)

In an organisation, any information that would provide the organisation with a competitive edge over the others would be considered a trade secret.  For this reason, several organisations are ensuring that their employees are signing strong non-disclosure agreements containing declarations of maintenance of confidentiality.  In the past, several case laws have occurred regarding the issue of confidential information.  The trade secret declarations would frequently reflect these case laws (IP Australia, 2008).

The trade secret route can be utilised to protect a variety of subject matter including sales processes, drug data, consumer profiles, business methods, information of clients and suppliers, advertisement plans, medical and insurance details, etc.  Some of the unfair practises that may arise include breaching confidentiality and contractual agreements, commercial espionage, industrial spying, etc.  An organisation may go in and cover any type of information that it feels it needs to protect (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

            The trade secret route does not require to be registered by the IP office.  It can be protected without any procedural formalities.  The trade secret can be protected for any duration of time (including unlimited duration).  As any type of information can be protected, without the need for registration and for any duration of time, several organisations are going in for this route to protect their valuable information.  However, there are certain conditions under which information can be protected as trade secret.  The WIPO has come up with several guidelines that the member nations would have to follow regarding maintenance of trade secrets by the organisations located in the nation.  These minimum guidelines are mentioned under Article 39 of the TRIPS agreement.  These include:-

·     The information has to be kept secret (that is not accessible or generally known to others)

·     Due to the secretive nature of the information, it would have commercial value

·     The owner of the trade secret should take reasonable amount of measures to protect the information (Such as taking non-disclosure agreements from the employees) (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008)

Many SME’s are going in for the trade secret route of protection for its confidential information.  This is because the trade secret route is not easy, but also does not require a rigours registration process and can be enabled by making the employees sign simple confidentiality contractual agreements.  A trade secret agreement is legally enforceable.  However, the organisation has to take certain minimum steps to ensure that the information is well-protected.  The organisation would have to make a decision regarding the possibility of patenting the invention or protecting it through the trade secret route.  If the information does fulfil the three criteria required under patents, then the organisation could consider patenting the invention.  However, if the invention does not sufficiently fulfil the criteria required under patents, then the organisation should consider protecting it under any IP route including trade secrets.  Certain manufacturing processes that are not patentable can be protected by the trade secret route.  Such processes may in fact be protectable by the Utility model route (petty patents that involve having a less strong inventive step and which has faster registration processes).  When the information is patentable and the organisation may consider either patenting it or protecting it under a trade secret, several issues need to be considered including:-

·Duration for which protection is required

· Registration costs

· Registration hassles

· Quickness of which the protection is required (trade secrets can be immediately protected)

· Compliance and formalities that are required (patents required several formalities including publishing the invention, disclosing all the information, maintaining the patent, renewal of the fees, working the invention, compulsory licensing, etc) (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

However, the organisation would also have to consider the limitations the trade secret route would have including:-

·     Trade secret does not protect against reverse engineering – Anybody can actually take the product and dissect it and inspect it and duplicate the same technology.  This is the weakest point of the trade secret route of protection.

·     The other parties are not exclusively excluded from making, selling, distributing or marketing the product/process

·     If the information leaks to the public, then the protection is lost

·     It may be very difficult to enforce the trade secret, as compared to a patent.

·     The level of protection under the trade secret varies from one nation to another

·     Whenever the organisation loses certain employees, some amount of trade secretiveness may be lost

·     A trade secret technique developed by one organisation may be invented by another party and that party can go on and patent their invention by legal means ((WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

However, there are certain situations under which commercial organisation would like to protect their information as trade secrets than as other routes of protection.  These include:-

·     When the information as such is not an invention and cannot be protected

·     When there is a good chance that the information can be kept as a trade secret for a sufficiently long duration of time

·     When the information is worth being kept as a trade secret (e.g. the coca cola formula)

·     Several manufacturing processes which cannot be patented

·     Products that cannot be reverse engineered

·     Excessively long duration of patenting (WIPO, 2008)

In certain countries including developing nations have very weak protection for trade secrets.  The scope of trade secret protection varies significantly from one nation to another, and hence, the organisation would have to consider the location in which it exists.  Certain nations would have experienced strong cases regarding trade secrets and the level of protection would be higher.  Some organisation may consider the utility patent route for protection of certain manufacturing processes rather than the trade secret routes (WIPO, 2008)

Developing an IP policy for the enterprise

A Business organisation would like to know the confidential information that is existent in their competitor’s organisation. However, the organisation itself would be aiming to protect the confidential information created by it.  This is because confidential information has great commercial and industrial value.  Breaches of confidential information by the staff members would result in litigations which run in millions of dollars.  Hence, a company would be developing certain policies and practises to ensure protection of its confidential information.  One of the greatest problems faced by an organisation is about espionage and sabotage.  In order to protect against such kind of competition, strong IP policies, practises and adequate management is required.  As long as the confidential information remains with the rightful owners, it would be having high value in the market.  However, once the competitor or others know about this information, then the value is lost (WIPO, 2008).

An organisation needs to have its own program to adequately protect the confidential information.  An IP policy would not only help protect trade secrets, but also other types of information.  This includes other types of innovations and information that do not have much commercial value, but are of utmost importance to the organisation.  Some of this information includes personal records of the employees, litigation history, planning system, employee growth policies, patient information, insurance details, investment details, etc.  Hence an entire IP policy of the organisation has to be framed that would help the organisation to withstand any sort of circumstances including disasters, crisis situations, heavy workloads, etc (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

Case Study

In the case mentioned in the question, S is the founder of the Partisan group which deals with the development of new joysticks.  The joystick can potentially be protected through patents, trade secrets or other IP routes.  Since it has certain new technology that involves fewer movements of the joystick along with more precise movements, it could lead to the development of new joysticks.  The company needs a lot of funding to help prototype the model, and besides, the company has grown several folds during the last one year.  Stephen has not adequately protected the IP of the company, even though he has several part-time employees working in it.  He has no IP policy to protect any inventions of the company including potential patents, trade secrets, copyrights, etc.  Jon who has joined the company recently, has had the problem of his previous company IP policy.  His previous company has claimed the IP for even intellectual information performed at home.  Jon is more than happy to join Partisan as it has not IP policy in place, and would permit him to even use the IP developed at the Partisan Company for his personal gain.  Williams on the other hand is more than satisfied to work with Partisan as he would not have any problem joining with a competitor of Partisan.  Williams can potentially go on and leak the information to the competitors thus misusing the information of Partisan.  Williams has no liability even if he leaks the information he has obtained from Partisan, as he has signed no contractual agreement or non-disclosure agreement that would ensure confidentiality.  This could have a serious effect on the development of the Partisan group as now any of the intellectual property that is being developed at the company can potentially claimed to be a personal property of the employee.  This is one of the major problems several organisations have during the initial period once they are formed.  Hence, it is very important for Stephen to develop his own IP policy so that the company would not have any problem with securing patents or protecting any confidential information.

In developing the IP policy for Partisan, Stephen should consider several legal, technical and business issues.  Besides, the company would also have to employ certain legal and technical specialists to actually develop the IP policy that would suit their needs.  One of the basic steps required in framing the IP policy is to recognise and prioritise the business trade secrets of the company depending on their commercial and industrial value and the sensitivity.  The value of the information and its sensitivity in the organisation would be changing and hence frequent reviews need to be conducted to determine these factors.  One of the mechanisms that can be frequently conducted is a trade secret audit.  This involves recognition, protecting and effectively managing the trade secret that is present in the organisation.  A trade secret present in the organisation has to be immediately assessed as it may hold great commercial value.

One of the most common ways in which a trade secret can be protected is through non-disclosure agreements or non-compete clauses.  This would come along with the employment contract.  Besides, the company should also frame a set of rules and regulations that would be a part of the IP policy and would involve several parties including managers, employees, contractors, vendors, customers, temporary staff, non-employees, interns, visitors, etc.  The government also does not require revelation of confidential information so that the organisation’s contractual documents can get registered.  Hence, the organisation is free to a reasonable extent to protect all the confidential information present.  Having proper IP policies in place would ensure that confidential information is given the right kind of place and respect.  The cost of implementing an IP policy to protect the confidential information is not much, but would have great value.  Besides, strong surveillance, audit and management measures need to be taken to ensure that the IP policy is fool-proof and would ensure dynamic protection of information required.  Besides, it would also need to curb any breaches that may be present from within or outside of the organisation.  Once the company has taken strong measures to protect the confidential information, any kind of misappropriation, malpractice or wrongful doings by any party could be handled through the legal route and ensure compensations in the form of damages.  Any person trying to acquire a protected trade secret through unfair means can be held liable under the court of law.  Some of the improper means that could be utilised include stealing, bribing, misrepresentation, breaching or inducing breach, spying, etc.  However, it is important to note that reverse engineering and independently developing the technology can be considered as legal means of acquiring the technology.  The user is free to dissect the product, go down to the skeletal structure, examine its functioning and develop the same or similar technology.  People who make a compilation of trade secret information would be excluded if they obtain the information through legal means (WIPO, 2008 & IP Australia, 2008).

Employees’ role in the trade secret

It is very important that the organisation not only ensure that the IP is protected through legal contractual documents, but also certain amount of awareness and education needs to be brought about in the staff members.  This would have to be an integral part of the trade secret protection program.  The staff members need to be trained and educated about the IP policy that exists in the organisation.  The rules and regulations of the IP policy should be clear, consistent and simple.  Besides, the employees should clearly understand the concept of what a trade secret or confidential information is actually.  The staff members would also have to be educated about the auditing process and the compliance and monitoring measures taken by the organisation.  The organisation should also strive to continuously improve the auditing and monitoring standards.  One of the most serious issues and insults that any employee can face in an organisation is false allegations of stealing or misappropriation of the company information.  A newly hired employee may be subjected to a lot of harassment if the company unduly doubts whether he/she is misusing the company’s confidential information, and falsely puts such allegations on him.  It is the important that the company develops some sort of the system to keep a check on the employees as well as ensure that they are not subjected to unhealthy practises that may ruin the satisfaction levels of the employees with the job.  Periodical reminders in the form of conferences, awareness programs, etc would help to keep a strong and effective awareness in the IP issues.  The employees need to be educated and given greater awareness of the latest IP issues, rather than be considered as potential thieves who would be constantly interested in stealing information from the organisation.  When the employee is in the process of leaving the organisation, efforts need to be made to ensure that further release of confidential information is prevented once the employee leaves the organisation.  The employees should be educated about what they responsibilities or liabilities towards the organisation even once they leave the organisation.  Although an employee would have signed a declaration at the beginning of joining the organisation that they would not leak out any confidential information once they leave the organisation, a further declaration should be taken whilst they are leaving the organisation to ensure that they understand their responsibilities towards the organisation.  Some employees may be forgetful of their responsibilities towards the organisation after they leave the organisation (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

Limiting the physical access to confidential information

The organisation needs to take other measures to ensure that confidential information is well protected.  One of that is to place certain processes and structures that would control access to trade secrets.  The organisation should implement these measures to ensure that whoever wants to access confidential information.  Each user should be able to access only relevant information from the trade secret database of the organisation.  This information should be accessed by using an appropriate username and password, and each log in would be recorded by the organisation including the duration of the logging in and the files which have been accessed.  This log in system should not interfere with the workflow of the organisation, but at the same time should ensure a great deal of protection of the IP present in the organisation.  An employee should only be able to access the files and other information that he has responsibility over.  If he is given permission over other information, then he could misuse the information (WIPO, 2008).

Confidential information and the Electronic age

In today’s age, a lot of confidential information is sent across the network.  It is important to remember that the internet is not the safest place for data to be present.  It becomes a very complex situation for the organisation when it depends on several electronic tools such as e-mails, messaging systems, websites, internet file sharing, etc to transfer information and make it accessible for others.  A Corporate office may have employees on the other side of the world, which would require them to utilise the internet information tools.  It is important that the organisation itself has employees who are able to understand the manner in which these internet tools would be functioning, the manner in which they would be storing data, and also the way in which licenses could be utilised.  A huge corporate can subscribe to a user license that would provide the users with a safer mode of transferring data over the internet. There may be network connections between the databases of the organisation and the internet, and certain security measures including firewalls need to exist to ensure that the flow of information is thoroughly controlled by the administrators.  In the non-disclosure agreements, the employees should be informed that transferring information over the internet or for matter in any electronic format should be handled with the same care as they would be handling information in the hard copy format.  Hence, they should take certain measures to ensure protection of data whilst transferring over the internet (WIPO, 2008 ; IP Australia, 2008).

One of the important aspects to be considered whilst dealing with information over the electronic format is that online documents can constantly leave a trail over whichever areas it has passed.  One of the means of preventing misuse of these temporary copies is to encode or encrypt information before it has been transmitted over the internet and decoding it at the other end.  The organisation should have an encrypting tool to transfer the information safely over the internet.  This encryption tool should be monitored carefully to ensure that it is functioning without any problem.  The company should also monitor the transmission of information of the staff member over the internet.  However, it should give certain amount of personal liberty to the staff members to perform some amount of personal functions.  The organisation should also prohibit one member from accessing the other member’s information such as emails, files, etc (WIPO, 2008).

The organisation would also be storing data in physical devices such as CD’s, DVD’s, etc, which also need to be adequately protected.  Whenever the user opens a file or a CD containing confidential information, a warning notice should immediately appear warning him or her that the information contained within the file is confidential information in nature.  This notice would be in relationship with the non-disclosure contractual agreement the staff member would be having with the organisation.  Besides, such notices would also come in handy to the employee informing them immediately of what information needs to be kept confidential (WIPO, 2008).

Effectively handling any breaches of confidential information

Several organisations are not considering the breaches of confidential information by the staff members seriously.  Staff members who have access to confidential information are misusing the information in whatever way they can, and the organisation would not be taking any measures, even though the staff members have signed in non-disclosure agreements.  Competitors are trying to draw in the employees from other organisations, by paying them higher salaries and offering them promotions.  Once an employee would be leaving one organisation, a huge amount of trade secret would be lost.  The employee would be revealing the information to the new organisation.  Besides building a strong IP policy, the organisation should also have a strong legal defence system that would protect the organisation against erring employees.  The employers need to treat any breach in confidential information very seriously.  Disciplinary actions (internal measures), civil suits and criminal cases need to be implemented whenever the one staff member access confidential information he/she has no right to access.  The employer has to only demonstrate the wrongful intention of the staff member whenever they is a breach of confidential information (WIPO, 2008).

Conclusion

I do feel strongly, that however small an enterprise may be, it has to develop a strong IP policy that would protect all forms of information in the organisation.  The IP policy should also be backed by a strong legal set up that can swing into action whenever there are any infringements of the company’s trade secret.  Besides, the network department should work in close coordination with the IP department to ensure all technological issues can be taken into consideration.  In case of a situation wherein confidential information has been beached, stringent measures need to be taken to prevent any further loses to the organisation.  However, the organisation should also ensure that the staff members should be adequately educated about the IP issues.

References:

IP Australia 2008. Intellectual Property and Competition Review Committee, [Online], Available: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/about/ipcr.shtml, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

IP Australia 2008. An Introduction to Intellectual Property, [Online], Available: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/about/ipcr.shtml, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

IP Australia 2008. Patents, [Online], Available: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip/patents.shtml, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

IP Australia 2008. Confidential Information / Trade Secrets, [Online], Available: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ip/patents.shtml, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

Latimer, P. 1998. Australian Business Law, CCH Australia.

UNSW 2008. Intellectual Property Policy, [Online], Available: http://www.policy.unsw.edu.au/policy/ippol.pdf, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

WIPO 2008. What is Intellectual Property, [Online], Available: http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

WIPO 2008. Patents or Trade Secrets? [Online], Available: http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/ip_business/trade_secrets/patent_trade.htm, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

WIPO 2008. Cases in Which Your SME may Benefit from Trade Secret Protection [Online], Available: http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/ip_business/trade_secrets/benefits.htm, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

WIPO 2008. Utility Models [Online], Available: http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/ip_business/utility_models/index.htm, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

WIPO 2008. Trade Secrets: Policy Framework and Best Practices, [Online], Available: http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:dp5L5tjuJIYJ:www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/wipo_magazine/05_2002.pdf+http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/wipo_magazine/05_2002.pdf;hl=en;ct=clnk;cd=1, [Retrieved: 2008, September 24].

http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/pdfs/general/bright%20ideas.pdf

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