Is it valid to apply for a patent using the company’s carrot seal? How to prevent the legal risks caused by the seal?

In order to protect the company's effective rights and interests, the company's official seal is generally required to be unique. However, a certain enterprise will engrave a few more official seals for backup due to business needs. These have not been registered with the competent department. Seal, we often call it "carrot seal".

Privately engraved official seals are also legally valid as long as the company knows its existence and affixes them to contracts, official letters, and letters of introduction. Applying for a patent using the company's carrot seal is also valid.

Legal risks of "carrot seals"

Compared with the management of one official seal, there are more uncertainties and risks in the management of multiple official seals. For example, the salesman carries the company's engraving When the "carrot seal" goes out to sign business, once it is affixed to an agreement that is not related to the company, causing a dispute, the company cannot defend on the grounds that the official seal affixed to the agreement does not match the company's actual filing seal. In other words, the agreement privately signed by its employees will have legal effect, and the official seal stamped on it will be the company's main body, and its legal liability will also be borne by the company.

How to avoid seal legal risks?

Most seal legal risks are caused by irregular behaviors of individual personnel. Therefore, we recommend that enterprises should use modern scientific and technological means to upgrade the traditional manual seal management model to an information-based and intelligent seal management model. For example, applying a smart seal management system to remotely monitor and control the use of seals online through APP and smart devices can effectively avoid private use and sealing of seals.