The prototype shown to a supplier

What are the two separate problems here?

Disclosure

Sending enabling drawings to four companies with no confidentiality agreement is a disclosure to people under no obligation of confidence. Whether it amounts to making the invention available to the public is fact-specific, but the company would carry the burden of showing that each recipient was bound - and with one recipient who never even replied, that is difficult.

If it is treated as a public disclosure, it is prior art against the company's own later application.

Misappropriation

Separately, there is the question of what the non-responding manufacturer did with the drawings. Without an NDA the contractual position is weak, and India has no dedicated trade secrets statute - the claim would rest on the equitable duty of confidence, which needs evidence that the information was communicated in confidence.

The two problems compound: the same missing document that would have preserved novelty would also have given a contractual remedy.

What should have happened

• Filed before sending drawings out for quotation.
• Used a signed NDA with every recipient, including those who never quoted.
• Sent staged information - enough for a quote, not the full assembly - until an NDA was in place.
• Kept a record of exactly what was sent to whom and when.

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.