Day: August 3, 2006

Being worried about your intellectual property while outsourcing your project makes a lot of sense. After all, this is what you are paying to get developed, right?  So let’s first understand what exactly IP covers: Patents i.e. Inventions registered with government which will prevent anyone else from manufacturing or marketing it Trademarks i.e. Name, Phrase, Sounds and Symbols which distinguishes your product and services Copyrights i.e. Expressions of ideas but not the idea itself Trade Secret i.e. Any formula, pattern, device or compilation of data that gives your company an advantage over competitors is a trade secret Let’s examine how your intellectual property can come under attack: Immoral Employees Employees who is working on your project might not stay with the company forever. Once they are gone, they can sell the property or use (read as “reuse”) it in the next organization. Immoral Companies The vendor may themselves feel welcomed to use the work for their own benefit i.e. launches a competing product at lower price. Act of Theft A hack or theft of vendor’s servers or storage devices may make everything available to the entire world. How do we protect your IP? 1. Signed Agreement with your organization We sign an agreement with your organization that grants you full, exclusive and irrevocable rights to the IP. This agreement is only subject to one clause i.e. there should not be any outstanding money against your account. 2. Signed Agreement with Employees Each employee at Indus signs an agreement which basically ensures that any work product at Indus cannot be used outside our organization. In case of a breach of such agreement, we can proceed immediately with legal action. 3. Secured Infrastructure Indus employs fulltime in-house system administrators who ensure that our staging servers both in USA and India are monitored 24/7 for its usage. The servers are also physically secured.  Thus, go ahead and outsource in peace!