"Disclosure Is Underrated" - Interview with an European Patent Attorney

We spoke with a seasoned European patent attorney who supports innovation-driven companies across Europe. While his name remains confidential due to professional regulations, his insights offer a compelling look into how invention management is evolving, especially for R&D-intensive organizations and startups. If you have further questions or wish to discuss legal aspects of enforceability or prior art recognition, please contact us via our contact form. We will be happy to connect you with the expert behind this analysis.

His client, a multinational firm, handles over 150 invention disclosures per year. Yet budget limitations meant only about 30 ideas annually were selected for patent filings. The rest were archived, unpublished and legally unprotected.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 made the invention earlier."

To solve this, the company began systematically publishing unused inventions. Depending on the strategic value, some disclosures were professionally drafted; others were released using the original invention report. The goal: preserve freedom to operate and proactively block others from patenting the same ideas.

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 and even the colloquial poor man's patent. Regardless of the label, the concept gave his client a cost-effective, legally solid way to establish prior art, if the disclosure was done in the right and legally compliant way.

"It's about building a smart barrier, not just protecting what you patent, but preserving what you can't."

To support and verify the underlying legal robustness of the Proofbox platform, we commissioned this same European patent attorney to conduct a comprehensive legal analysis of the technical and procedural design of our disclosure service. His full opinion - including commentary on legal recognition, timestamping, searchability, and discoverability - will be shared in an upcoming post. (EDIT: You can now find this post at the following link.).

Platforms like Proofbox now make it easier than ever to act quickly: publication is instant, timestamped with an eIDAS-compliant LTV certificate, and indexed for global discoverability. At the same time, our access-controlled archive prevents excessive public dissemination, ensuring that your disclosure is legally valid but not freely exploitable. This helps guard against automated monitoring, AI-based scraping, or competitive intelligence bots systematically targeting 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 thanks to access-controlled archives
• Far more cost-efficient than a patent application
• Legally recognized as prior art in global patent systems