The investor deck that became prior art

Which of these is the problem?

All three, in different ways

The recording is a public disclosure with a date, indexed and findable. The slide is the most damaging part if it enables the invention - a diagram can disclose more than several paragraphs.

The emails are more nuanced. Disclosure to a limited group under an obligation of confidence is not disclosure to the public. But nineteen recipients with no written obligation, some of whom will have forwarded it, is not a confidential disclosure in any practical sense - and proving otherwise would be the company's burden.

What determines the damage

Whether the disclosure enabled the invention. A slide saying we use machine learning to optimise dispatch discloses an aspiration. A slide showing the specific architecture, the data flow and the decision points may disclose the invention.

That is why the sensible discipline is not secrecy about the company, but care about which technical detail leaves the room.

What should have happened

• Filed before demo day - a provisional, properly written, takes days not months.
• Kept the architecture slide out of the public deck and in a separate technical annex under NDA.
• Assumed anything recorded or emailed would become public.
• Kept a copy of every version of the deck, with dates, so the extent of disclosure could be established later.

This scenario is a composite teaching example written by Ragulika IP. It does not describe any real client, application or matter, and any resemblance to a specific case is coincidental.