Protect Your Ideas is an online utility combining different features, functions and elements that are designed to help people who believe their ideas have value and want to protect them as they go about developing and exploiting them.

Yes. Protect Your Ideas offers two levels of membership and corresponding pricing that allow you to use its facilities. If you register as a Member you can upload works for digital encrypted time-stamping and you pay £10 per upload. If you want to use the galleries and all the other features and facilities at Protect Your Ideas including the time-stamping you should register as a Pro Member which costs £40 per year and includes 5 FREE uploads.

A pure idea that you have in your head can’t be protected by law which is why you have to be careful deciding who to talk to about it, when and in what context.  Certain areas of intellectual property law can help you, but only at the point where there is an identifiable embodiment of your idea.

Copyright protection extends to the expression of an idea in a fixed form (ie as a work), but it does not extend to procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts.  So, literary works, artistic works, musical works, videos, recordings etc are protectable by copyright. 

Patent law protects inventions and the source of a great invention is invariably a great idea, but they are not the same thing - an idea alone is not enough.  To succeed with a patent application, you will need to have developed the original idea into an invention that is sufficiently well scoped out that, whether or not you have made a prototype, someone expert in the sector would be able to make and use the invention from your description. 

So, in summary, the law only really helps the person who not only has an idea, but who also puts in the work to develop, implement or execute that idea.

No it is not.  Copyright does not depend on official procedures. A created work is considered protected by copyright as soon as it exists.  However, some countries (like the US) have a national copyright office and some national laws require registration of works in connection with disputes relating to copyright.  That is not the function and purpose of Protect Your Ideas and the time-stamping facility that we provide.

The Secretariat of the World Intellectual Property Organization noted that certain websites issue certificates purporting to grant copyright protection. Protect Your Ideas does not do this and these websites and their certificates do not create any right.  By virtue of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, works are protected without any formality in all the countries party to that Convention which is most countries in the world. This means international copyright protection is automatic and exists once a work is created.

Virtually all ideas, whether creative, business, inventions or otherwise require work, development and collaboration over a period of time and are likely to involve other people’s input.  To minimize the risk of disputes, particularly where an idea turns out to be lucrative it is good practice and advisable to have evidence to prove when you had your idea and the timeline by which it evolved and developed including when and how you added new elements or aspects to it. By uploading it to Protect Your Ideas at key points in the development process you will have evidence of that timeline and Protect Your Ideas as an independent 3^rd party witness to confirm the upload dates should there ever be a dispute.

It is very rare for an idea to leap fully formed into your head and the first expression of it to be the final, complete work, so yes, you should upload versions of your idea as it evolves to keep a record of the development of it.  You should register as a Pro Member and once you’ve uploaded your first work you’ll see a Re-Upload button on the file in My Protected Works.  Click Re-Upload and you’ll be able to upload a new version of that same work which will then appear in the same field as the original work in My Protected Works to show the chronological development.  For inventors this enables you to create an invention diary of what you did and your workings as you developed an invention.  Protect Your Ideas will be a 3^rd party witness to confirm the dates on which you uploaded different versions of your invention or work as it evolves over a period of time which will be valuable evidence in the event of a dispute.

No, you can upload as many new files or works as you want and an unlimited number of versions by way of the Re-Upload button on each work.

Yes, there’s a limit of 25mb for each file.

Files are stored for 10 years and before the period is about to expire you will receive an email letting you know that a file is about to be archived.  You can then decide whether or not you want to Re-Upload it.

No, unless you choose an access permission that allows an uploaded work to be posted in one of the galleries. If you register as a Pro Member you can choose whether to upload a work with “Open Access” which will enable it to be seen in the Open Gallery, or “Pro Members’ Access” which means other Pro Members will be able to see the work in the Pro Members’ Gallery.  If a Pro Member uploads a work with “No Access” the work will not be posted in either of those galleries and the ideas will be kept secret.  A work uploaded by a Pro Member with “No Access” can then be uploaded to the NDA Gallery for confidential viewing by a recipient invited by the Pro Member to access the work.

One of the hardest things to know when you think you’ve had a great idea is who to tell about it and when and how to tell them. In some instances it may make sense to tell the whole world about your idea, so you would upload a work with Open Access and you could tell people to go to the Open Gallery at Protect Your Ideas where anyone could find it.  But sometimes you want to keep an idea secret while you do more work to it or to make sure others can’t steal it, in which case you should upload it with No Access.  There are no hard and fast rules and part of the dilemma is that the law doesn’t protect mere ideas. So you have to think hard about the issue and make your own judgement taking legal advice if you’re in doubt.

A couple of pieces of general advice to help you:  If you’ve come up with an idea for an invention and you’re developing it with a view to making a patent application at some point in the future, you should upload it (including any iterations of the idea that you Re-Upload during its development) with No Access.   If you need to talk to someone about your invention you should use the NDA Gallery so that they are bound by a confidentiality agreement.  This will ensure that your invention is not in the public domain which will be important when you make your patent application.

If you’ve come up with an idea for an original creative work (eg a literary, musical, artistic or other work) then copyright will protect the expression of it and by uploading the work at Protect Your Ideas you’ll be able to prove the date on which you had the idea and that it was yours.  Choosing whether to tell people about it or not is an important decision and if you are uncertain you should upload the work with No Access and consult a lawyer. 

If the work is finished and fully formed, the lawyer may advise that you are better off telling the world about it – in that case uploading it with Open Access so that anyone can see the idea in the Open Gallery may be the right option rather than keeping it secret. 

If the idea is at an early stage and you need to collaborate with other people to develop it, then uploading with No Access and showing it only on a need-to-know basis to other people using the NDA Gallery may be a safer option. 

The Pro Members Gallery is open to all Pro Members so it is not a confidential environment in which to show your works, but if you are working on an idea with one or more Pro Members you may prefer to use it to liaise and collaborate with each other.

Ideas for a new business and many other types of ideas are not protectable under copyright or other intellectual property laws so again, the decision for a Pro Member about whether or not to let the world know about it is an important one on which you should seek legal advice.  If in doubt, upload the work or file containing the idea with No Access and use the NDA Gallery to let other people access it.

It is definitely worth bothering with a Non Disclosure Agreement and people do go to court with breach of confidence claims. There are a number of cases that have been brought and which establish the legal position with respect to breach of confidence and, depending on the worth of the confidential information damages may be awarded as compensation and, in more extreme cases an injunction or account of profits. However, it’s important to add that the main reason for having a NDA in place with someone is to deter them from breaching confidence and to avoid going to court. In the case of inventions, it’s very important that you keep an idea secret and confidential prior to making a patent application otherwise your invention will be regarded as being in the public domain and therefore unable to be registered as a patent.

This does happen. The inventive, and sometimes the creative process can move in a certain direction over a period of time so different people in different parts of the world can be thinking along the same lines and working on the same or similar ideas at the same time.  The origins of photography is an interesting example: Louis Daguerre in France and William Fox Talbot in England both developed different photographic techniques and processes at the same time in the 1830s.  

However, in most instances ideas do not just happen.  They evolve and there is a process to refine and develop them which makes it all the more important to time-stamp ideas to be able to establish, in the event of a dispute when you had yours and at what stage of development it was or what elements it included at any given time; ie not only so you can prove an idea was yours and when you had it if you need to bring a legal action against someone for, eg breach of confidentiality, but also so that you can prove you were working on your idea at a given time if someone brings a claim against you.

You will need to consult a lawyer to advise you on the matter and to try to resolve the dispute and, if you want Protect Your Ideas to confirm the date of uploading a work or file with your ideas in it, or to be a witness to the existence of a NDA between you and a recipient with whom you have a dispute, please email us at admin@protectyourideas.com.

Protect Your Ideas is not a firm of solicitors so while the website has been created and designed by lawyers we are not promoting a legal advice service or able to act on your behalf if you’re involved in a dispute.  Protect Your Ideas will provide evidence as an independent 3^rd party witness to back up the facilities offered on the site such as the time-stamping of works and files that you upload and Non-Disclosure Agreements that you conclude using the NDA Gallery.

You could contact the website in question and let them know your concern. If you want to let us know the website’s response please email us at admin@protectyourideas.com.  The best thing to do is consult a lawyer and then, having taken legal advice to decide whether or not to use the website in question.