Episode 4: Trade Secrets

Synopsis

Summit TV takes a look at intellectual property in a 13 part series with leading specialists on the topic. The fourth show in this series features Claire Duggan from Sasol on when a trade secret strategy may be more appropriate than going the patent route.

Transcript

Summit TV takes a look at intellectual property in a 13 part series with leading specialists on the topic. The fourth show in this series features Claire Duggan from Sasol on when a trade secret strategy may be more appropriate than going the patent route.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: Welcome to Intellectual Property on Summit TV. Today we are going to talk about how South African oil giant Sasol is making use of intellectual property to secure and enhance shareholder value.  Our studio guest tonight is Claire Duggan from Sasol.  Claire, to start tell us a little bit about what you do at Sasol…

CLAIRE DUGGAN: I’m an in-house intellectual property legal advisor at Sasol - one of a number of such intellectual property legal advisers. Our role is to enhance Sasol’s competitive advantage through intellectual property initiatives - we do this by assisting with extracting intellectual property, by protecting our intellectual property through obtaining intellectual property rights, and through carefully drafted agreements pertaining to intellectual property. These two activities are underpinned by our intellectual property strategy being aligned with our technology and business strategies. Then we have a role in understanding the competitive landscape in the field in which we are engaged so as to avoid the infringement of the intellectual property rights of third parties.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: Sasol being a truly global South African company how do you use intellectual property to get that competitive edge in the global markets?

CLAIRE DUGGAN: Our intellectual property initiatives in that regard include protecting our inventions by way of patents in countries of interest to us - we thereby grow our patent portfolio. In so far as mechanisms for protecting our corporate and our product brands are concerned we register trademarks - once again in countries that are of interest to us, for example where we may have offices or where our products may be sold. Also, securing domain name registrations - which as you may know is a website address. We seek to rigorously protect our trademarks and our domain names, and to police the correct use thereof. Then another initiative would be to manage our trade secrets…

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: It’s quite fascinating - if you think about the Sasol brand on the rugby t-shirts there’s quite a wide portfolio of intellectual property that you have to manage…

CLAIRE DUGGAN:  That is quite correct, yes.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: You mentioned trade secrets - we understand what’s meant by patenting, but how do you go about a strategy for protecting trade secrets?

CLAIRE DUGGAN: As I’ve suggested Sasol has intellectual property assets that are in the form of trade secrets, and we do commercially exploit some of those to derive competitive advantage. How we would go about protecting them would be to prevent our own disclosure thereof, also to guard against the improper taking of those trade secrets by others.  We have an internal policy that provides a framework for the protection of our trade secrets - the process would include such steps as identifying those things that may be appropriate for trade secret protection, and then a process of approving trade secret protection as opposed to any other form of protection in a particular case - and then of course managing access to the trade secret.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: So you have got a choice - either you have got to go the patenting route, or you have to go the trade secret route?

CLAIRE DUGGAN: Yes. It’s not always possible to protect everything by way of patent, and in some instances it may be more appropriate to maintain something as confidential - those would be factors that would bear upon that decision.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: I’m very glad you mentioned that, because thinking about the current landscape there’s a lot of discussion about the Bill on public funded intellectual property where there’s huge encouragement for academic institutions and so forth to pursue patent strategies, and to patent more and increase the number of patents. Sasol obviously can’t afford to patent everything - even being a large company - what is your view on that?

CLAIRE DUGGAN: Quite correct - it becomes quite costly. But it is an important component of intellectual property protection mechanisms. As I suggested in each case one should consider the merits of the various forms of protection that are available.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: Can you expand a little bit on that - in which instances would you typically go the trade secret route rather than the patent route?

CLAIRE DUGGAN: Patenting an idea ultimately results in that idea falling into the public domain. That would be a fairly important factor - if you would like to retain the info as confidential for as long a period as possible that would be a factor in that decision.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: Sasol is a huge company in South African terms - you’re listed in the JSE and the New York Stock Exchange - is what you’re describing here in the strategy that you take only applicable for large companies? What if I’m a smaller company or a representative of medium sized companies in South Africa?

CLAIRE DUGGAN: Yes, I would say it’s certainly not exclusively for Sasol - it’s my personal view that intellectual property protection can be beneficial for small and medium sized enterprises as well. Most small or medium sized enterprises have trade names - or one or more trademarks they make use of that they should consider protecting. Virtually every product in service that we make use of in daily life is the result of a chain of either small or big innovations such as design changes or improvements that make a product look or function as it does - I would say regardless of the type of product that an enterprise makes or the service offered it’s likely that they will regularly use and create intellectual property. Intellectual property may assist a small or medium sized enterprise in many aspects of its business development and competitive strategy - be that product development, marketing, raising finance or expanding the business through licensing - so it can be a valuable business asset for small or medium enterprises as it is for Sasol.

STEPHAN LAMPRECHT: So it’s everyone’s business big or small size doesn’t matter…