Prepare Software Ip Filings

---
name: prepare-software-ip-filings
description: Prepare evidence-backed software IP materials from a frozen baseline. Use for invention disclosures, patent packages, copyright deposits, filing checks, or code-to-claim maps.
---

# Prepare Software IP Filings

Build a traceable evidence package before writing legal conclusions. Treat all filing rules, forms, fees, and portal requirements as jurisdiction- and date-sensitive; verify them against current official sources and qualified counsel.

## Workflow

1. **Freeze the baseline.** Select an immutable tag or commit, product version, platform, completion date, publication history, authorship, ownership, and excluded later work. Preserve the commit hash and clean export method.
2. **Separate public and private facts.** Keep identity numbers, addresses, signatures, credentials, customer data, and unredacted screenshots outside version control. Use one private input sheet rather than copying sensitive fields across drafts.
3. **Inventory protectable material.** Map technical problems, mechanisms, state transitions, data structures, security controls, tests, UI flows, and release evidence. Separate technical mechanisms from business goals or marketing language.
4. **Choose the filing track.** Use the patent workflow for technical solutions and claims; use the software-copyright workflow for authorship and deposited expression. Do not merge their standards or imply one grants the other.
5. **Build evidence maps.** Link every important statement to frozen source files, tests, diagrams, runtime logs, commits, and dates. Mark inferred, planned, third-party, and unsupported material.
6. **Draft consistently.** Keep product name, version, applicant/author, platform, dates, terminology, figure numbers, modules, and feature scope consistent across every document.
7. **Validate mechanically and visually.** Check source continuity, page/line counts, generated hashes, text consistency, secrets, privacy, figure references, PDF rendering, and absence of placeholders.
8. **Run independent review.** Obtain current prior-art/legal review for patents and current portal/form review for copyright. Do not label a package “ready to file” while required evidence, identity, ownership, search, or signatures remain open.
9. **Package reproducibly.** Record source baseline, generator version, inputs, output hashes, quality reports, final filenames, and which files remain private.

## Guardrails

- Do not invent dates, authorship, publication, ownership, source volume, test results, or official requirements.
- Do not treat an implementation detail as novel merely because it is complex.
- Do not claim patentability or grant probability without a current search and professional review.
- Do not include third-party or generated dependencies in source deposits unless the applicable rules and rights support it.
- Do not commit official identity documents, signatures, private forms, or candidate/customer data.
- Do not regenerate filing materials from a dirty working tree when a frozen baseline is required.
- Preserve historical evidence; correct conclusions in a new report rather than rewriting old timestamps.

## References

- Read [patent-workflow.md](references/patent-workflow.md) for invention mining, claims, drawings, search, and filing gates.
- Read [copyright-workflow.md](references/copyright-workflow.md) for frozen source deposits, manuals, screenshots, generation, and QA.
- Read [project-evidence.md](references/project-evidence.md) for the reusable evidence system extracted from this repository.