Patent Or Trade Secret?

Both patent and trademark law have gone through some drastic changes in recent years, including new kinds of post-issuance proceedings and last year’s passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act. The result has been that the calculus for setting an IP strategy has changed, and in some cases gotten more problematic. An article in Today’s General Counsel, by Ropes & Gray attorneys Peter Brody and Darrell Stark, is a guide to deciding how to proceed in situations where both strategies would provide some form of protection. This discussion of pros and cons includes a flow chart that can serve as a roadmap for making the decision, with reference to the various factors that are discussed in the article.