A good ELN can protect a company’s Intellectual Property in a variety of ways aside from the traditional role of creating and preserving evidence to be used in a Patent action.
I don’t know the details of the specific case but this recent legal case where an employee stole trade secrets before leaving for a competitor brings up another way.
Specifically, if they had been using PatentSafe:
- Every read of a document would have been logged
- The Custodian’s Console would have alerted management to unusual activity
- Users would know they were accountable for the company’s secrets
The last of those is most important. If people know they are accountable this would never have happened at all – the scientist wouldn’t have been tempted, the company wouldn’t have had to prosecute, lots of money would have been saved and a prison sentence avoided.
