Three things must be true
The invention must be new (nobody has made it public before), involve an inventive step (not obvious to someone skilled in the field), and be industrially applicable (it can actually be made or used).

The most costly mistake: talking about it too soon
Unlike designs, EU and Swedish patent law generally require absolute novelty — there is no general grace period. A demo, a sale, a pitch to investors without an NDA, even a conference talk, can destroy patentability if it happens before you file. File first, talk after — that’s the safest order. (The US works differently — it allows a 12-month grace period after your own disclosure. This tool assumes EU/Sweden rules unless told otherwise, so mention it if the US matters to you.)

Not everything is patentable
Pure ideas, business methods as such, and software “as such” are generally excluded in the EU/EPO system. What usually qualifies is a technical solution to a technical problem — a new mechanism, process, or way something physically works.

This tool doesn’t draft claims
Claim drafting is a specialised skill that shapes exactly what’s protected — that part always needs a patent attorney or agent, ideally one with a background in the relevant technical field.

The default surprises most business owners
The person who actually created something — a freelancer, an agency, even an employee in some cases — owns the copyright by default, not the company that paid for it. "We paid for it" does not automatically mean "we own it."

One real exception: employees and computer programs
Under Swedish law, computer programs created by an employee as part of their job transfer to the employer automatically. That specific rule does not extend to other kinds of work — text, photos, designs, video — made by employees, where ownership is more dependent on the employment contract and how the work was used.

Freelancers and agencies are the most common gap
Unless a contract explicitly assigns copyright to the company, the freelancer or agency keeps it — even after full payment. This is the single most common way businesses discover, often during a sale or investment round, that they don’t actually own their own website, logo, or product photos.

Using someone else’s work isn’t automatically infringement
Quotation, private use, and parody are examples of situations the law treats differently — context matters more than a simple "did we copy it" question.

Three things have to be true
The information must actually be secret (not generally known or easily found out), it must have commercial value because it's secret, and — this is the part people miss — you must have taken reasonable steps to keep it that way.

"Reasonable steps" is where cases are won or lost
If a competitor ever uses your secret and you take them to court, the first question isn't "did they steal it" — it's "was this actually protected as a secret in the first place." Without NDAs, access limits, or any documented process, a court can rule there was no trade secret to infringe at all, regardless of how unfair it looks.

Unlike a patent, there's no filing and no deadline
Protection exists for as long as it stays secret and you keep protecting it — no registration, no renewal, no fixed term. That's also the risk: one careless disclosure and it's gone permanently, with no way to get it back.

Two families, very different consequences
Permissive licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD) mostly just ask for attribution — safe to use in commercial, closed-source products. Copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL, AGPL) come with strings attached: use the code a certain way, and you may have to open-source parts of your own product too.

The trap most teams don't see coming: AGPL and SaaS
Regular GPL obligations are usually triggered by distributing software. If you just run it on your own servers as a web app, you might assume you're safe — but AGPL specifically closes that loophole: even offering the software over a network (which includes ordinary SaaS) can trigger its copyleft obligations, with no code ever leaving your servers.

This surfaces at the worst possible time
Nobody checks this until a buyer's or investor's lawyers do, during due diligence for an exit or funding round. Finding an unresolved GPL/AGPL dependency at that point can delay or reduce the value of a deal — catching it early is much cheaper.