Protect your trade secrets and business know-how

Some of your most valuable assets are never patented. Bernstein helps you document and protect confidential business information with proofs anchored on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The trade secret paradox

Trade secrets are valuable precisely because they're confidential. But proving you owned a secret - without revealing it - has always been a challenge.

Bernstein's zero-knowledge architecture solves this paradox. Certify your trade secrets with blockchain evidence while keeping them completely private - even from us.

The rising importance of trade secrets

As opposed to most other intellectual property types, trade secrets are loosely described as any kind of confidential business information and therefore come in an extensive variety of forms.

Source code, methods, prototypes, pre-release pricing, financials, budgets, contract terms, business plans, market insights, employee salaries, supplier and customer lists, chemical formulas, experiments, positive and negative experimental results, engineering specifications, laboratory notebooks, and recipes.

Trade secrets have long been overlooked in corporate IP strategy. Several factors are now driving increased focus on trade secret protection.

Why trade secret protection matters now

Rising employee mobility

Employee dissatisfaction and poaching by competitors leads to valuable knowledge leaving the organization.

Digitalization risks

Transferring confidential knowledge has become as easy as copy-pasting, downloading, or emailing data.

Accelerating innovation pace

The patent system - with its 24–30 month timelines, territorial fragmentation, rising costs, and effectiveness doubts - is becoming less relevant for fast-moving companies.

Legislative updates

Lawmakers worldwide are updating legislation in favor of trade secret holders, with harmonized definitions and stricter enforcement.

Formal requirements of a trade secret

Under the EU Trade Secrets Directive and equivalent laws, information qualifies as a trade secret when it meets three conditions:

1
It is secret - not generally known among the circles that normally deal with this kind of information.
2
It has commercial value because it is secret.
3
It has been subject to reasonable steps to keep it secret.

Key trade secret regulations

EU Trade Secrets Directive

Directive 2016/943 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information

US Defend Trade Secrets Act

Federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation (2016)

China Anti-Unfair Competition Law

Amended 2019 - expanded trade secret protections and penalties

Japan Unfair Competition Prevention Act

Criminal and civil remedies for trade secret misappropriation

Trade secrets and blockchain

Blockchains, and particularly public blockchains, are immutable global registries. Innovators can leverage them to prove the existence and ownership of a trade secret at a certain time.

Confidentiality is not compromised: when registering information on a blockchain, the only piece of information publicly available is the hash and the timestamp indicating when the transaction occurred.

Blockchains can potentially assist at various stages of the life cycle of a trade secret, notably when it comes to the 'reasonable measure of protection' and enforcement of a trade secret, i.e., being able to prove that the information has been kept secret in the event of a misappropriation.
— Birgit Clark and Sylvia Polydor,"How blockchain can protect trade secrets," Intellectual Property Magazine, May 2018

How Bernstein fits in

Bernstein is a web application that registers IP assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. Bernstein certificates are legally recognized worldwide and independently verifiable by any third party.

By using Bernstein, innovative companies can quickly establish a private trade secret inventory - a measure considered a 'reasonable step' to maintain confidentiality under the EU Trade Secrets Directive and equivalent laws.

Thanks to its unique zero-knowledge architecture, trade secrets are notarized on the blockchain while keeping them completely private - even from Bernstein itself.

Bernstein complements blockchain certificates with digital timestamps issued by several government authorities (EU, China, and more).