If you truly have
a national patent (and not a national patent application),
then the patent is public knowledge. Anyone in the world can find it, and in
most countries (including the US, Europe, and much of Asia) finding it as easy
as entering the right query on a web page.
If you only have a national
patent application, then it may not be public yet. But it will be (in most
countries) 18 months after you filed it. So if your outside that window, again,
there’s no secrecy to preserve.
Whether or not your
patent or pending application is currently public, in most of the world it
constitutes “prior art.” (“Most of the world” certainly includes the US,
Europe, and most if not all of Asia.) That means it will block any later-filed
patent applications that seek to cover the technology disclosed or suggested by
your patent application.
To be sure, there might
sometimes be good reasons not to show someone your not-yet-published patent
application. But if you’re only worried about someone using it as
“inspiration” to file their own patent application on the same
technology, you need not worry.
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