Information disclosure statement

An Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) is like telling your teacher all the cool things you know before you start a project or test.

It's a paper that you write to share with the person who is going to check your work (like a patent examiner).

On the paper, you list all the things you've found that are related to your invention or idea. These could be books, articles, pictures, or even other patents.

By doing this, you're making sure that the person knows everything you know about your topic. It's like showing all your cards in a game, so nobody can say you didn't tell them something important.

It's very important to hand in an IDS because if you're found to not have shared all the relevant information, you could get in trouble for it later.