Protect pitch decks, business plans, and trade secrets

The situation

You've spent six months designing a project: detailed business model, market study, working prototype, financial projections, intellectual property. You're pitching investors, industrial partners, or mentors. You send your deck to fifteen people. One of them passes — or their team funds a "strangely similar" project three months later. You recognize your angle, your model, sometimes your technical architecture.

Or: you're in talks with a corporate group for a partnership. You present your solution at several meetings. After four months of discussions, no deal. Six months later, the group launches an internal feature that looks a lot like your proposal.

Or: a former co-founder leaves the project with part of the plans and starts a competing activity. The NDA signed at the time is enforceable, but you still have to demonstrate what you held at the date of their departure, and that they actually used those elements.

Or: you launch an innovative product. Three months later, a competitor releases a similar product, similar packaging, marketing pitch aligned to yours. You hadn't filed a patent (too expensive, too slow, public disclosure not desired). You hadn't filed a trademark on the marketing angle either.

These situations share a common legal denominator, but their defense frameworks differ. And in every case, a lawyer's first question will be: what dated evidence do you have of the elements at stake on that specific date?

Three legal regimes to know

For a startup, protection does not flow primarily from copyright. Three other paths are available, which work together.

1. Trade secrets

The EU Directive 2016/943 of June 8, 2016, transposed into French law by Act n° 2018-670 of July 30, 2018, introduced articles L. 151-1 to L. 154-1 of the French Commercial Code, creating a specific regime for trade secret protection.

For information to be protected as a trade secret, Article L. 151-1 requires three cumulative conditions:

Point 3 is crucial: legal protection of trade secrets presupposes that the holder takes their own measures to protect the information. If you leave your pitch deck floating around with no framework, you cannot rely on trade secret protection. Anchoring the document on blockchain, keeping the proof ZIP, and being able to demonstrate the date of existence and non-modification constitutes precisely the kind of reasonable protection measure the text requires.

2. Economic parasitism (Concurrence parasitaire)

Parasitism, based on Article 1240 of the French Civil Code (delictual liability), allows action regardless of any direct competition relationship. The French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) defined it in 2024 in now-stabilized terms:

And crucial precision: this individualized economic value must be demonstrated on the day of the contested acts (Cass. com., June 26, 2024, no. 23-13.535).

Important limitation to know: the Supreme Court also reminds that "ideas are free to circulate, and the mere fact of reusing, by declining it, a concept implemented by a competitor does not, in itself, constitute an act of parasitism" (Cass. 1st civ., June 22, 2017, no. 14-20.310). A bare idea is not protected — what is protected is the individualized economic value materialized by documented efforts, know-how, and investments.

3. NDA (non-disclosure agreement)

The NDA remains an essential contractual tool, but its limits should be known honestly:

• You must prove what was covered by the NDA — so you need a dated trace of the specific items exchanged
• You must prove the violation, which often means comparing a documented initial state with a final state
• Mere breach of a contractual obligation is not enough to obtain significant damages unless there is a liquidated damages clause or proof of quantifiable harm
• And some investors refuse on principle to sign standard NDAs at the seed stage

The NDA and blockchain anchoring are perfectly complementary: the NDA sets the contractual framework, the anchoring proves what you held at the date of signing and what you transmitted afterward. Without that evidence, the NDA can become hard to enforce.

What you can anchor

For an entrepreneurial project, the scope is broad. Here's a mapping:

Strategic documents

• Complete business plan (frozen PDF)
• Pitch deck (successive versions)
• Detailed business model, financial assumptions
• Market studies, competitive analyses
• Product roadmap, long-term vision
• Funding plans, projections

Identity and angle

• Naming, trademark research (before INPI/EUIPO filing)
• Complete visual identity (logos, guidelines)
• Sales pitches, value propositions
• Brand voice, manifestos

Technology and product

• Prototypes, MVP, source code
• Architecture diagrams, data models
• UX/UI designs, Figma mockups
• Functional specifications
• Technical documentation
• Proprietary algorithms, technical memos (before potential patent filing)

Know-how and processes

• Internal methodologies, playbooks
• Operational processes, manufacturing recipes
• Client databases, proprietary datasets
• Formulations, technical processes

Third-party relationship documents

• NDAs signed with counterparts (with annexes describing the covered scope)
• Term sheets received
• Meeting minutes
• Correspondence with investors, partners, mentors
• Letters of intent received

Founding documents

• Shareholder agreements
• Co-founder agreements
• Capital allocation plans, employee equity
• Founding memos, original vision documents

Why the bundle changes everything

For startups, the bundle is almost the natural format. First because an entrepreneurial project is not a file — it's a coherent set of documents whose probative meaning only emerges when taken together. A pitch deck alone shows a presentation. The same pitch deck together with the market study that supports it, the detailed financial assumptions, the first product mockups, and the dated list of contacted investors demonstrates a documented entrepreneurial approach. That's precisely the individualized economic value that parasitism jurisprudence requires.

Second because at startup stage, you rarely sign before you share — you must convince, which means disclosing, before the contractual relationship is in place. A bundle anchored before each round of sharing (before sending to investors, before an important pitch, before a partnership) constitutes a sealed snapshot of what you held at that moment. That snapshot is what makes later defense possible.

Finally because everything moves fast. The pitch deck you send in May is not the same as in September. The chronological traceability of versions becomes an argument in itself. For €2 per bundle (up to 50 MB), building a chronology of prior dates over the entire life cycle of a project remains accessible even for a seed-stage team.

Alternatives to know

Several other tools exist for startups, worth mentioning honestly:

INPI's e-Soleau envelope (France): digital file deposit up to 300 MB per envelope, valid 5 years renewable. The classic French administrative approach, well-known.

APP deposit (Agence pour la Protection des Programmes): particularly relevant if the main value is in source code or structured technical know-how.

Trademark registration with INPI (€190 + €40/additional class in 2026) or EUIPO: for name and logo. Worth considering as soon as there's a brand to build.

Patent (INPI or EPO): for a technical invention meeting patentability criteria. Long, costly, and it implies public disclosure — to be weighed against strategic choices.

NDA: a useful contractual framework, but it presupposes, as noted, dated proof of the covered elements.