Sources: Skjerven, Morill, MacPerson, San Jose, CA, and Saratoga Venture Finance

1. Have all employees sign upon first day of employment an "Employee Proprietary and Confidential Information Agreement". It will help keep the company's secrets secret.

2. Install and enforce a written patent notebook procedure. It will strengthen your company's claims that its intellectual property is very valuable, as well as improve chances of obtaining desired patents.

3. Issue to all of the company's technical staff written patent notebook recordkeeping instructions. Be sure your people respect the importance of these instructions.

4. Be sure your VP of engineering strictly manages the issuing and tracking of all notebooks given to the technical staff.

5. Keep on hand a good stock of the kind of notebooks commonly found in stationery stores.

6. Issue to all employees and all managers Confidential Disclosure Agreements that cover the following areas and instruct them to use the documents in dealing with nonemployees:

1. START-UP, INC., and a third party exchanging confidential information.

2. START-UP, INC., receiving confidential information from a third party.

3. START-UP, INC., disclosing confidential information to a third party.

7. Require that your VP of finance and administration issue and control all Confidential Disclosure Agreements.

8. Prepare a document called "Submission of Inventions and Suggestions" for the use of third parties, typically nonemployees but also often nontechnical employees of START-UP, INC.

9. Prepare and "Invention Disclosure" form that will clearly identify the holder of any proprietary information that START-UP, INC., may be interested in using or developing.