Most IP teams face a frustrating dilemma. They want to block competitors from patenting similar ideas, but every existing defensive publishing platform dumps disclosures into open databases where AI scrapers and competitor monitoring tools can pick them up instantly. That is a real problem, especially for startups and mid-sized companies that cannot afford to telegraph their R&D direction to the market.
Proofbox takes a different approach. It is a defensive publishing platform built around one core idea: you should be able to establish verifiable prior art without broadcasting your entire innovation roadmap. The platform publishes your disclosure in a way that is globally discoverable by patent examiners, yet protected from automated scraping and unrestricted competitor access.
It launched recently on Product Hunt, and after spending time with it, I think it fills a gap that has been quietly frustrating IP professionals for years. The balance between enough publicity to count as prior art and enough discretion to protect your strategy is genuinely hard to strike. Proofbox has built its entire product around solving exactly that tension.
Key Features of Proofbox
Discreet Prior Art Establishment
Every disclosure published through Proofbox creates legally recognized prior art under EPC, PCT, and 35 U.S.C. frameworks. The clever part is the paywall restriction. The full contents of each disclosure sit behind a paywall, which blocks automated scraping tools and competitor monitoring pipelines from ingesting your technical details. Patent examiners can still find and cite the publication. Your rivals cannot auto-harvest it at scale.
eIDAS-Compliant Qualified Timestamps
The platform uses eIDAS-compliant qualified electronic seals and long-term validation to timestamp each disclosure. That means the publication date is cryptographically verifiable, not just a server log entry. SHA-256 hashing with UTC timestamps ensures every entry in the archive is tamper-proof and auditable on a daily basis. This is the kind of technical foundation that makes a disclosure defensible in a real patent dispute.
Independent Online-Only Archive
Proofbox does not push disclosures to any external public database. It operates its own fully independent archive, hosted in ISO-certified data centers with full EU GDPR compliance and end-to-end encryption. Publications remain publicly accessible and searchable for seven years. Availability is logged daily, and every link in the archive is permanent. Patent examiners can integrate the Atom feed directly into their search crawlers.
Data Syndication for Patent Offices
Proofbox provides a standardized machine-readable Atom 1.0 feed specifically for patent offices and researchers. It uses IPC (International Patent Classification) standards within category tags and supports targeted delta updates so examiners can fetch only records published after a specific date. This is what makes the disclosures globally citable, without making them freely available to anyone with a web scraper.
How a Startup IP Lead Used Proofbox on a Deadline
Clara Mendes is an IP lead at a Berlin-based hardware startup. At around 9:30 on a Tuesday morning, she was reviewing three internal sensor calibration methods that the team had decided not to patent. The cost and timeline were not justified for those particular ideas, but she was worried that a competitor could file on similar concepts and later claim exclusivity.
She had looked at traditional defensive publishing services before. The problem was always the same: once published, the full disclosure would sit in a public database, openly indexable. For a startup, that means handing a free briefing document to every well-funded competitor with an IP monitoring tool running.
She uploaded a PDF describing the first sensor method to Proofbox at 9:45 AM, completed the payment, and by 10:00 AM the disclosure was live in the archive with an eIDAS-compliant timestamp. The publication was immediately citable as prior art. No patent application filed, no legal fees for prosecution, no public broadcast of the technical specifics to the competition. She repeated the process for the other two methods before lunch. Three disclosures established, roadmap still protected.
How Publishing Works on Proofbox
Step 1: Prepare Your Document
Write up your invention as a PDF. The first page becomes the thumbnail preview in the archive, so structure it clearly. Proofbox provides a free drafting guide and whitepaper to help you format the disclosure to meet formal requirements.
Step 2: Upload and Title
Log into your account and upload the PDF via the publish form. Add a title, confirm authorship, and accept the liability declaration. The process takes a few minutes.
Step 3: Pay and Publish
Payment triggers the publication. Once confirmed, Proofbox issues the eIDAS-compliant eSeal, timestamps the document, and logs it in the archive. The disclosure is live immediately and begins appearing in the syndication feed for patent examiners.
Step 4: Access via Dashboard
Your published disclosures are accessible from your dashboard. You can also download an archive copy for your records, verified via DSS (Digital Signature Service) for independent date validation.
Pricing
A full defensive publication costs $ 460 (incl. VAT), which includes instant eIDAS-compliant eSeal, seven years of publicly accessible online availability, daily auditable availability logging, and paywall-restricted dissemination. An archive download is available separately for $ 23 (incl. VAT), with free non-commercial use and permanent availability. New users can currently claim a starter voucher for 50% off their first publications.
Who Should Try Proofbox
If you are an IP manager, startup founder, or individual inventor who wants to protect freedom to operate without filing full patents, and without handing your technical details to competitor monitoring tools, Proofbox is worth a serious look. It is especially relevant for teams sitting on ideas that do not justify patent prosecution costs but still need prior art protection. You can explore the platform and claim a starter voucher at proofbox.co.
