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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