Only show what you need.

Sometimes ideas need privacy. With Ideanote you can decide to hide or reveal ideas in your innovation process.

decorative
decorative
decorative illustration

How can I protect my ideas?

The most common way to protect an idea is by copyrighting it. Copyright protects the expression of an idea. It's like a legal contract between you and the world that says: "If you use this idea, we'll give you money."

Copyright is important because it gives you exclusive rights to your idea. If someone uses your idea without paying you, they may be infringing your copyright. That means they could face fines or worse.

But there are other ways to protect your idea too.

1. Patent

Patents are another type of intellectual property protection. A patent grants you the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, or importing your invention for a limited time period.

Patents are good if you want to keep people out of your business. For example, if you invent a new product, you might not want everyone else copying your design. But patents don't protect your idea itself. They only cover how you developed it. So if someone copies your idea but does something different with it, they still own their version.

2. Trade Secret

Trade secrets are a bit more complicated than patents. In addition to protecting your idea, trade secret law protects information about your idea. This includes things like formulas, designs, marketing plans, customer lists, and manufacturing processes.

Trade secrets are useful when you want to prevent competitors from stealing your idea. But unlike patents, trade secrets don't grant you exclusive rights to your ideas. Instead, they allow you to keep them secret.

3. Confidentiality Agreements

Confidentiality agreements protect your idea in exchange for keeping it confidential. These agreements usually require you to pay a fee to keep your idea private.

Confidentiality agreements aren't always necessary. Sometimes you can just ask your friends and family not to tell anyone about your idea. But confidentiality agreements are often used when you want to keep your idea secret while you develop it.

4. Non Disclosure Agreement

Non disclosure agreements are similar to confidentiality agreements. They're designed to protect your idea until you've finished developing it.

5. Trademark

A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or design that identifies your company as the source of a particular product or service.

Trademarks are helpful if you want to stop companies from passing off their products as yours. For example, if your company makes widgets, you might register a trademark so that no one else can call themselves "Widgets Inc."

6. Licenses

Licenses are contracts that let you use someone else's idea. For example, if someone has patented a widget, you might license his idea to manufacture and sell it under your name.

Licensing is a great way to protect your idea if you want to share it with others. And it's easier than creating your own unique idea.

7. Unpublished Works

Unpublished works include everything you write before you publish it. It doesn't matter whether you plan to publish it or not.

Unpublished works are protected by copyright laws. Copyright laws give authors the exclusive right to copy, distribute, display, and perform their work.

How can I hide ideas in Ideanote?

An idea sharing platform for business might have different needs than one for your local sports association. That's why you have the power to limit how much information is shared across the entire process. Ideanote makes it easy to restrict access to certain interactions while still offering a transparent process that can be followed from the sidelines by everyone. Or would you rather have complete airtight secrecy? No problem. You can customize each step of each idea-collection to fit your exact use-case.

Ideas are collected in real time, and they're stored securely on our servers. Data is securely encrypted in transit and at rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Questions and Answers