The Day of the Inventors stands for the memory of great inventors and forgotten inventors. But it’s also set up to encourage people to come up with ideas to improve things.
What can you do to protect your idea?
- An abstract idea can not be protected. Work out your idea and investigate which parts are important to protect. Think of a new technique or the name or the design of the product.
- Put an official date stamp on your idea via the i-DEPOT. This proves that your idea existed on a certain date.
- If your idea concerns a new technique, it may be possible to protect it with a patent.
- Link the idea to a protected trademark. Branding is essential.
- Includes your idea a product with a striking design, then you can protect it with a design registration. This can be important because this special design can be part of your marketing strategy.
- Keeping an idea secret. If your idea does not contain an easy to recreate product or if it is not easy to find out how your invention works, a trade secret can already provide protection. A trade secret arises under certain conditions: the information has commercial value, is secret and measures have been taken to keep the information secret.
Day of the Inventors
9 November is the birthday of Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000). Lamarr was a beautiful and talented actress, but she was also an inventor. 
Lamarr discovered, together with George Antheil, how radio communication could be made insensitive to external disturbances by frequency shifts. The current WiFi system is developed on the basis of this 'Secret Communications System'. It is too much to describe her extraordinary life here, but for inventor and entrepreneur Gerhard Muthenthaler she was so special that he proclaimed November 9 as the Day of the Inventors.