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[BrkRn]

Well, we all are aware of that for European patents, one of the biggest mistake for an inventor is to disclose the invention publicly before it's application.

But what is "publicly"? Especially at below I will provide you a specific example:

Let's say that company A have a patent A on car brake systems. The priority date of patent A is 01.12.2000.

Company A is also large and technology developer company where they are also in car standards committee so they have big role about developing said car standards. Said car standard is published in 05.05.2001

However before publishing the standard with its last version, they have published the draft of said car standart not publicly but they exchanged it between the companies who contribute said car standard in the date of 30.06.2000

Let's assume that the technology that patent A brings was already disclosed in the draft version of said car standard.

Have company A done "the biggest mistake"? Was the technology of patent A being disclosed by putting that technology in said car standard and exchanging it with other companies?

As a result, what are the borders of "disclosing publicly"?

[bartmans]

Ingeneral it can be said that if information is exchanged under confidentiality, it will not form a public disclosure. However, confidentiality can take many forms. The clearest one is when an NDA is signed, then there will be no doubt. But there are some situations where confidentiality is less clear, such as in your example.
There has been some case law in Europe where public disclosure/confidentiality were at issue. I vaguely remember a thread on this forum where I discussed this case law.
A nice starting point to the most recent case law on this is: http://k-slaw.blogspot.com/search/label/Availability%20to%20the%20public.

Reagrds.