Podcast with Sign8: How Companies Preserve Good Ideas with Defensive Publications

In brief: A defensive publication deliberately turns an invention into prior art and may thereby stand against a later patent application by a third party for the same invention. On Sign8's podcast, Johannes Hiesmayr, founder of Proofbox GmbH, describes it as a complement in IP management that, together with IP rights and contracts, forms the IP protection triangle. Proofbox gives every publication a qualified electronic seal with a timestamp based on a certificate from Sign8, assigns a DOI and logs from when it was publicly findable.

Johannes Hiesmayr, founder and managing director of Proofbox GmbH, was a guest on Digital Identity Insights, the podcast by Sign8. Sign8 is the qualified trust service provider whose qualified certificate underlies the electronic seal on every Proofbox publication. In conversation with host Laura, the episode addresses a question that innovation management often neglects: what happens to ideas that make strategic sense but do not justify a patent procedure?

The episode runs for about 21 minutes and is in German. Below the video you will find the chapter overview and an English summary of the key points.

Chapter overview

• 00:00 Intro and introductions
• 01:20 What are defensive publications?
• 02:50 Why the topic is becoming relevant again
• 04:36 Patent, contract or defensive publication?
• 06:48 Common misconceptions about patents
• 09:26 Proofbox and the role of trust services
• 13:24 Use cases in education, research and industry
• 17:01 Trade secrets and internal evidence
• 19:13 Tips for a sound IP strategy
• 20:12 Conclusion

What a defensive publication is

A defensive publication is not an intellectual property right. Johannes describes it as a complement within industrial property protection: a company deliberately makes an invention public instead of filing a patent application for it. This is typical for an invention disclosure that is valuable enough to preserve but not valuable enough to justify the cost of a patent application. The publication turns the invention into prior art. The company can continue to use it, and it may stand against a later patent application by a third party for the same invention.

Why the topic is gaining importance again

Defensive publications are not a new instrument. What is new is the environment. AI models make new developments faster and easier, and knowledge is more accessible today than it used to be. At the same time, budgets for industrial property protection are under pressure in many companies. Companies are therefore increasingly concentrating their patents on their core competencies. For developments that are not yet ready for the market but could become important later, a defensive publication is a way to retain freedom to operate.

The IP protection triangle: IP rights, contracts, defensive publications

Does a company have to choose between patents and defensive publications? For an individual invention, yes. For the portfolio, no. A balanced IP portfolio can, for example, comprise three elements, which can be described as the IP protection triangle. IP rights cover the core know-how. Contracts govern developments created in cooperation with partners. Defensive publications are an option for side developments and smaller improvements where you want to keep the door open for the future. Which element suits which invention is decided case by case.

The most common misconception

Especially in small and medium-sized enterprises, it is tempting to assume that there is no real need to deal with industrial property rights. Yet IP also concerns, for example, developments that are meant to remain secret, because they too require evidence of when they existed. Laura draws a comparison with cybersecurity, in which many companies only invest once the damage has already occurred. Industrial property protection is similar: a dispute in court is generally more expensive than a timely decision in favor of a patent application or a defensive publication.

What Proofbox does and what role Sign8 plays

Proofbox is an online platform for defensive publications. The invention is described in a document and uploaded as a PDF, after which processing is fully automated. Proofbox creates the technical and organizational conditions for the publication to be capable of being recognized as prior art. Whether it is taken into account in a given case is decided by the competent authority or court. In the conversation, Johannes names three building blocks on which this is based.

Discoverability. A publication must be publicly findable, for example via a search engine or an AI assistant. For this purpose, every Proofbox publication receives its own permanent address, search-engine-readable metadata and a DOI. Only the metadata and the summary are openly accessible, while the full text sits behind an access barrier. This makes bulk extraction by crawlers and AI systems more difficult, which Laura specifically asks about in the conversation.

Evidence of discoverability. It must also be possible to show that a publication was findable. Proofbox regularly retrieves the public address of every publication without logging in and records the result in a log. The entries are chained together on a principle similar to a blockchain: each entry includes its predecessor, so that subsequent changes become detectable. The log documents to the day from when a publication was findable and can be downloaded for each publication.

Date and integrity. Every document receives a qualified electronic seal with a qualified timestamp under the eIDAS Regulation. It documents that the document existed in exactly this form at that point in time and makes later changes detectable. The seal is issued to Proofbox GmbH and is based on a qualified certificate from Sign8. Sign8 is a qualified trust service provider and is listed in the trusted list of the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), while Proofbox itself is not a trust service provider. The seal can be verified in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader without any special settings: in addition to its own trust list, Adobe also incorporates the trusted lists of the European Union and therefore displays the seal as valid.

“The seal is applied to our documents and is the evidence that a document with this form and this content already existed on a specific day.”

Universities and research

Universities publish anyway. Whether a publication in a journal is taken into account as prior art depends, among other things, on whether its date and its public accessibility can be evidenced. Johannes suggests checking this for every publication and otherwise additionally placing the work on a platform for defensive publications. When Laura asks whether this protects you against third parties, he corrects a word that is often used incorrectly in this context:

“The term ‘protect’ is somewhat dangerous for us, because you can only truly protect an invention with a patent. We prefer to speak of preserving: you preserve your development.”

Industry: from the invention disclosure process to the decision

Many large and international companies have established an invention disclosure process. Employees report an invention, and the IP department evaluates it. Valuable inventions are filed as patent applications. For smaller improvements whose commercial exploitation is not yet foreseeable, the choice remains between secrecy and a defensive publication that actively creates prior art. Which path is chosen also depends on the budget.

Trade secrets and internal evidence

A trade secret is a development that a company deliberately keeps secret so that competitors and other third parties do not learn about it. Johannes calls this a double-edged sword. Anyone who later has to prove that they already had a development internally, for example in connection with prior use, will find this difficult after the fact. A document that was electronically signed or timestamped at the time and filed internally makes that point in time verifiable. There is one thing a trade secret cannot do, however: it does not stop anyone from filing a patent application for the same development or publishing it themselves.

For such internal evidence, Proofbox offers proof of existence without publication. A document or an entire data set receives a qualified seal with a timestamp, without the content being published or leaving your environment. We are happy to show you how this works technically for your documents in a platform call: just get in touch.

The conclusion

What Johannes passes on to everyone working on IP strategy, patents and innovation management is, first of all: stay informed. And then look at industrial property protection as a whole.

“It is important that industrial property protection does not consist of patents alone. You should look at the IP protection triangle as a whole and at least keep contracts and defensive publications in mind.”

You can watch the full episode on YouTube on Sign8's Digital Identity Insights channel. The episode is in German, and the quotes have been translated and lightly edited. You can read more about comparing the approaches in the article Defensive Publication or Patent? How to Choose?, and about typical fields of application in The Four Most Valuable Use Cases for Defensive Publications.