How to protect my business idea?

The short answer disappoints many people: in Brazil, an abstract idea can't be patented. The Industrial Property Law (Law 9,279/1996, art. 10) says that purely abstract concepts, commercial methods and business plans, among other things, are not inventions. What can be protected is what the idea becomes: a brand, a concrete invention, a design, software, a contract.

The second part of the answer is the most important: the best protection for an idea is to execute it better and faster than whoever heard it.

The practical path

1. Register the brand at INPI. Your business's name and logo can be registered with the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). Before investing in signage, a website and packaging, search INPI's own database to see whether the name already has an owner. The application can be filed online by the entrepreneur, but a professional helps choose the right classes.
2. Assess whether there is a real invention. If you created a new technical solution with industrial application, an invention patent or a utility model may apply. A critical point: Brazil grants a 12-month grace period for disclosure made by the inventor (Law 9,279/1996, art. 12), but many countries, such as those in Europe, don't. Disclosing before filing can rule out a patent abroad. Talk to an industrial property agent before showing how it works in public.
3. Use a confidentiality agreement. When presenting details to potential partners, suppliers or developers, ask for a nondisclosure agreement (NDA). It doesn't prevent everything, but it creates evidence and liability.
4. Keep proof of authorship. Email dates, document versions, software registrations at INPI (for computer programs) and registrations of intellectual works where applicable.
5. Make clear who owns what. In a partnership, the articles of association or partners' agreement should say who owns the brand, the code and the ideas developed. This is the point that causes the most fights later.
6. Don't hide the idea from everyone. Whoever doesn't talk about the idea can't validate it. Talk about the problem and the benefit; keep the technical "how" for those who have signed a confidentiality agreement.

How Bairo went through it

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez says he learned this lesson the most expensive way. With the cosmetics brand up and running, he saw the next step: a solution using touchscreen technology. It was his idea. His partners pushed him out of the business, and the idea stayed with them.

He says some defeats hurt the wallet and others hurt somewhere else. That one hurt in both places. It also left a lesson he carries into everything he builds today: choose whom you build with, and put in writing, from day one, who owns what.

The Method step

Protecting the idea is part of step 4 of the Seventh Attempt Method: choose whom you build with. Before opening the project to someone, answer in writing who owns the brand and the ideas, how someone leaves and what happens if one person stops working. If that conversation seems uncomfortable now, it would be much worse later.

Discover the Seventh Attempt Method

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