Knowledge Protection
What knowledge is general, what knowledge is related to work and needs protecting in the form of Know-How and IP?
- Knowledge
- Valuable knowledge? Know-how
- Protection of knowledge: secrecy
- Intellectual Property Rights (IP rights)
Knowledge
Knowledge is everything a person knows. A lot of this knowledge is not relevant to the world at large (childhood memories, fishing stories, etc.). And only a part of the remaining knowledge is relevant to a person in his or her professional capacity. This ‘professional knowledge’ of sorts, is made up of all the knowledge a person has gathered, though education, experience or creative efforts. But even a lot of professional knowledge has only limited value for the world at large, e.g. because it is 20 years of experience which has not been written down. Of the accessible professional knowledge a lot is important but not necessarily valuable to the person knowing it. This applies for example to the information found in textbooks or publications. The reader of such works may find it important but it is not valuable to the reader in a commercial sense. Although that knowledge usually comes at a price (subscription free or price of a book) it is the reader that has to pay. None of the described knowledge warrants protection, it’s not relevant, intangible, publicly available, or provided by someone else.
Valuable knowledge? Know-how
The sort of knowledge that does warrant protection is knowledge which is relevant, laid down, not publicly accessible and that is your own. Such knowledge might be worth protecting, if it is considered to be valuable in a commercial sense. Its commercial value depends on the relevancy of knowledge. What is valuable to one may not be to another. However the value of relevant knowledge can be answered by asking the question “how much time/effort/money would it cost to acquire the same knowledge?”
There a many definitions of Know-how, most encompass the above elements. Know-how in an academic setting can be a lot of different things. Unpublished data, a specific protocol, extensive experience with certain equipment, optimal conditions for experiments, improved rules for animal handling, etc.. Know-how in a commercial setting can include a customer database, improved packaging techniques, optimal production setting, waste reduction methods, recycling of discarded materials, etc.
Protection of knowledge: secrecy
There are only two options to ensure that your Know-how remains valuable. The first is secrecy, this works for all Know-how. The advantage is that it requires no additional effort and if kept secret Know-how is likely to remain valuable for a very long time. However, once secrecy is breached, the floodgates are open. Know-how cannot be “unlearned”.
To try to ensure that secrecy is observed professional parties often enter into confidentiality agreements (or CDA’s) or non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Although that may provide a mechanism to get compensation, it does not guarantee that certain Know-how will remain secret. As know-how is usually linked to people; a famous quote is “know-how goes home at five o’clock”, there is a real risk that secrecy will be breached sooner or later.
Intellectual Property Rights (IP rights)
The second alternative to try to keep Know-how valuable is turning it into Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property rights or IP rights are rights which protect Know-how which meet the criteria set-out in IP laws. Well known IP laws are patent law, copyright law and trademark law. Generally speaking, IP laws protect the fruits of creative labor. Depending on the field or type of ‘fruit’ different IP laws apply and sometimes overlap. For example patents are granted for inventions in a technical field. Copyrights protect the elements of an object which bears the personal imprint of its maker and has an individual character. For copyright the function of the object plays hardly any role.
The various IP laws have different requirements. Nevertheless a number of basic requirements exist. The ‘fruit’ must be elaborated, a mere idea is insufficient. The ‘fruit’ must be cognizable and is usually required to be made public, both to show the general public what is protected and to provide a basis for further growth of human knowledge. The ‘fruit’ will be protected for a limited number of years. During this time the owner of the right has an exclusive right to use the ‘fruit’ in a commercial sense in a specific country.