---
name: publish-or-protect
description: Use this skill when the user is about to make an invention, method, or technical result public and needs the choice laid out first: file a patent application, publish defensively, or keep it a trade secret. Inputs include the operator's notes on one invention, the Prior Art Records, the Public Evidence Graph, and any earlier public mention. The skill compares the three outcomes side by side with reasons, finds the earliest date anything about the invention was public and which countries that date affects, marks technical data that may be export controlled as HOLD, and states who decides each outcome and by when. Triggers on requests like "should we publish this or file," "prepare the publish-or-protect comparison," "can we post this technical note," "what do we give up if we present this," or "is this a trade secret or a defensive publication."
---

# Publish-or-Protect
This skill is Labor as Code™ for the Publish-or-Protect decision in
*Discoverability Engineering*. The know-how is an operator's habit of
asking, before anything goes public, what publishing would give away and
what it would protect, and of putting the answer in front of the people
who decide.

The method comes from "Patents and Prior Art Are Public Evidence That
Needs a Date Anyone Can Prove." Read it for the three outcomes, the
foreign-rights risk, and Merriden's September 24 decisions. This skill
runs the comparison on the user's own inventions. It does not retell
those decisions.

**This skill does not decide and is not legal advice.** It drafts the
comparison. A person who owns the business and a patent attorney decide
each outcome, because a public disclosure cannot be undone and the rules
differ by country. That restraint is the book's own subject matter: the
AI Workforce drafts and never decides what to file, publish, or keep
secret. Where the book presents three defensible paths, the skill lays
them out side by side with reasons instead of picking one.

## Before running

1. **Which invention, in the operator's words.** Get the notes. Ask
   what it is, who built it, when, and whether any customer, partner,
   or funding agency was involved. Do not assume company money.
2. **Whether anything about it is already public.** Ask about talks,
   pages, posted notes, trade-show demonstrations, sales decks, and
   shipped products. Search the public web and the archive for the
   invention's key terms and record what turns up with its date.
3. **Who decides.** Name the person for the business and the patent
   attorney. If the company has no attorney, the comparison says the
   decision waits for one.

## Step 1: Say what the invention teaches and what is public

1. Write what the invention teaches in a claim's words.
2. List every item already public, with its first public date and the
   source of that date. If none, write "nothing found," and list what
   was searched.
3. Write the earliest public date. It starts every clock below.

## Step 2: Compare the three outcomes

Write one column per outcome, each with reasons:

1. **File a patent application.** What a filing could protect, what it
   discloses when the application publishes about 18 months after the
   earliest filing date, whether a provisional application would hold
   the date, and what any earlier public date has already cost. Note
   that a license is required before filing abroad within six months of
   filing in the United States, and that an application under a secrecy
   order is never published.
2. **Publish defensively.** What a dated, enabling, findable disclosure
   would stop others from patenting, and what it gives up: the
   company's own patent rights, at once in most countries and after a
   year in the United States.
3. **Keep it a trade secret.** What must stay secret for the value to
   last, whether the company takes reasonable measures to keep it
   secret, and what a public mention of the values would end. Say what
   the public may be told: that a practice exists, without its values.

## Step 3: Mark the holds

1. Mark HOLD on any technical data that may be export controlled. Such
   data is not a candidate for defensive publication. The attorney or
   the company's export control contact clears it.
2. Mark HOLD on anything a customer, a prime, or a funding agency has
   rights in. List the clause or agreement name if the user gives it.
3. Mark HOLD on any date the skill could not establish.

## Step 4: Record and conclude

Write the entry in `specs/disclosure/publish-or-protect.yaml` with the
decision field left blank until it is made. Then conclude:

1. **The trade-off in two sentences,** naming the outcome the facts
   favor and the reason, or naming two outcomes when the facts do not
   separate them.
2. **What would change the answer:** a filing already made, an earlier
   public date, a customer's rights, or an attorney's view of the
   foreign-rights cost.
3. **Who decides and by when,** including any deadline the earliest
   public date sets.

Never write a recommendation as a decision. Never draft public text for
an invention whose outcome is not decided.

## What this skill does not do

- It does not publish, file, or send anything.
- It does not state that a disclosure is or is not prior art.
- It does not clear export-controlled data.