Purpose
Sabbath,Inc. provides services for protecting and managing a company’s intellectual property. We provide a "fire wall" between a company and third parties that approach that company with solicited or unsolicited product ideas and enhancements that are technology related. This "fire wall" provides a company with a quick and expert evaluation of ideas and suggestions from third parties while minimizing the risk of entangling the company’s intellectual property with outside suggestions.

In order to protect companies’ intellectual property rights and safeguard the time and effort invested in developing new technologies, Sabbath, Inc. provides companies with an "intellectual property protocol." This protocol provides a "fire wall" between a company and third parties that bring solicited or unsolicited technology-related ideas to the company. Too often, a company receives a suggestion or proposal from a third party and that suggestion or proposal is given exposure in the company and likely even reviewed by employees that are active in developing technology or products closely related to the suggestion or proposal. This can quickly result in intellectual property entanglements. If these entanglements precipitate litigation, the cost to the organization in terms of dollars and lost time can be enormous.

• Your company’s valuable intellectual property is protected from costly entanglements with the intellectual property of third parties.
• A clear and concise process for how your employees should handle suggestions and proposals from third parties is provided.
• Each suggestion or proposal is given an expert evaluation and your company receives a clear recommendation for how to proceed.
• Important and beneficial suggestions and opportunities are quickly gleaned from the trivial or useless suggestions.
• A filing system is established to manage all contacts and communication with third parties.

Protocol Details

The first step in establishing an intellectual property protocol is for Sabbath, Inc. to clearly understand your company’s product and technology strategies as well as your company’s internal technology development goals and capabilities. This information (provided under nondisclosure) is necessary for evaluating the applicability of third party suggestions to your business. Regular updates of this information for Sabbath, Inc. to remain current as your business goals and strategies change are required.

Next, we establish a secure filing system to retain all necessary documents received from third parties. We also communicate the details of the intellectual property protocol to all of your employees.

The intellectual property process itself will be customized to your company’s specific requirements, but most work something like this:

• Whenever you or one of your employees receive an offer to review, license or acquire a solicited or unsolicited outside technical innovation (whether software or hardware), Sabbath, Inc. would be immediately contacted.
• Sabbath, Inc. would serve as the Technical Evaluator. Sabbath, Inc. would contact the party making the proposal and execute an Outside Innovation Letter with the submitting party.
• Sabbath, Inc. would then coordinate a high level initial evaluation of the proposal, using selected internal expertise as required.
• If based on the initial evaluation it is determined that there is reason to pursue more in-depth discussions, a formal mutual nondisclosure agreement would be executed with the submitter and a formal internal technical evaluation would then be performed.
• If based on the initial evaluation it is determined that there is NOT any reason to pursue more in-depth discussions, Sabbath, Inc. would communicate that decision to the submitting party in writing, and all correspondence and materials relating to the submission will be sealed and retained in a master file.
• Similarly, if after the execution of a nondisclosure and formal technical evaluation, it is determined that there is no interest in proceeding, the file will be sealed and retained in the same master file.
• Regular summaries of the number and types of proposals received as well as their current disposition are provided.

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