"Disclosure Is Underrated" - Interview with a Patent Expert

We spoke with a long-standing and experienced representative before the European Patent Office who supports innovation-driven companies across Europe. His name remains confidential due to professional regulations. However, his insights impressively demonstrate how invention management is evolving, particularly in research-intensive organizations and startups. If you have further questions or wish to discuss technical aspects of discoverability or recognition as prior art, please contact us via our contact form. We will be happy to connect you with the person behind this analysis.

One of this patent attorney's clients, a multinational company, handles over 150 invention disclosures per year. Yet budget limitations meant only about 30 ideas were selected for patent filings. The rest were archived, unpublished, and thus left unprotected.

"That's risky," he explains. "Competitors often innovate in parallel. If they file first, they can secure rights that block your use, even if your team had the idea earlier."

To solve this, the company began systematically publishing inventions not selected for patent filings. Depending on strategic value, some disclosures were professionally drafted, while others were published based on the original invention disclosure. The goal was to support freedom to operate and proactively contribute to the creation of prior art.

As the European patent attorney explored this path, he encountered various terms for what is essentially a defensive publication — from research disclosure, technical disclosure, and innovation release to public invention record or the strategic disclosure of technical teachings. Regardless of the label, the concept gave his client a cost-effective way to establish prior art, provided the disclosure was done in a process-compliant manner.

"It's about building a smart strategy: not only protecting what you patent, but additionally preserving what you cannot patent."

To further substantiate the technical robustness of the Proofbox platform, we commissioned the same expert with a comprehensive analysis of the technical design of our disclosure service. His full statement, including comments on technical recognition, timestamping, searchability, and discoverability, is published in an upcoming post. (EDIT: You can find this post at the following link).

Platforms like Proofbox make fast action easier than ever: publication is immediate, timestamped with an eIDAS-compliant LTV certificate, and indexed for global discoverability. At the same time, Proofbox's access-controlled archive prevents excessive public dissemination, ensuring that your disclosure is effective but not freely exploitable. This protects against automated monitoring, AI-based scraping, or competitive intelligence bots that systematically analyze published innovation data.

"Now, every idea gets used. If we don't patent it, we disclose it. That mindset has changed everything."

Why Proofbox?

• Timestamped with an eIDAS-compliant qualified eSeal
• Indexable for global discoverability
• Protected from automated scraping through access-controlled archive
• Significantly more cost-efficient than a patent application
• Recognizable as prior art in global patent systems