For more info on a specific newsletter, click the title. Details will be displayed in a new window.
Subscribe to
Computerworld 40 years of the most authoritative source of news and information for IT leaders.
|
|
|
|
November 20, 2003 (CIO) -- On a typically steamy New Delhi day in late August 2002, Nenette Day walked into the Ashoka, one of the city's best hotels, for a meeting with Shekhar Verma. Verma had been fired from his job at Geometric Software Solutions Ltd. (GSSL), an outsourcer in Bombay. He allegedly claimed to have the source code for SolidWorks Corp.'s 3-D computer-aided design package, which GSSL was debugging. Verma had contacted a number of SolidWorks' competitors and offered to sell them the source code. Day, an American, had taken the bait and flown to New Delhi. After confirming that what Verma possessed was indeed SolidWorks' source code, Day began negotiating on price, eventually bargaining him down to $200,000 for the code. The deal was struck, and Day got up and left the room. Then agents from India's Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI) swept in and arrested Verma. Day wasn't arrested -- she's actually a special agent from the FBI's Boston Cybercrime Unit and had gone undercover to work with the CBI on this case, the first undercover operation for the FBI in India.
The arrest led to the first prosecutorial filing for outsourcing-related intellectual property theft in India, in a case that may come to trial before year's end. Given that software outsourcing was a multibillion-dollar business in India last year, the trial will likely draw close scrutiny from both sides of the world. Sound like an open-and-shut case? Day herself isn't nearly so confident. "With no case precedents, the reality is we have no idea how this plays out under their law," she says. Day also says that Verma made two small mistakes (she declines to specify them), without which he could have already gotten off scot-free, and that after a full week in India working with the prosecutors this fall, Day still doesn't understand the applicability of at least one of the critical charges.
Intellectual property, if stolen, "is a genie that can't be put back in the bottle," says Day. Currently, she says, "there is really no law to protect American companies' intellectual property."
U.S. companies need to think seriously about what that means. Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that by 2010, the U.S. IT industry will save $390 billion through offshore outsourcing of software development. But that trend also opens up new channels of industrial espionage in bitterly poor nations that often don't have laws protecting foreign companies and rarely enforce whatever laws may exist. India, obviously eager to protect its national income earned through outsourcing, is scrambling to demonstrate that it takes foreign intellectual property seriously. Some observers say that other countries vying for outsourcing dollars are even worse when it comes to providing legal protection for intellectual property. Court cases are still relatively hard to find, but that's about to change. Smart companies need to re-examine their outsourcing contracts and make sure they aren't at risk of becoming the test cases.
Reprinted with permission from
This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives.Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2006. All rights reserved.
|
Print this Story |
|
Send Us Feedback |
|
E-mail this Story |
|
Digg this Story |
|
Slashdot this Story |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
All Zones Application Performance Zone Enterprise-Class Security Zone Enterprise Solutions Zone The File Data Management Zone Grid Computing on Windows Zone Security Management Zone ITIL Best Practices Zone The SAS Zone Storage Virtualization Zone The Data Center Management Zone |
 See your link here
|
 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
|
Download this Computerworld Report, free, compliments of HP.
Long Tail Supplier Collaboration - What's In It For You? 
Get this white paper!
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
- Srizbi grows into world's largest botnet
- Analysis: Why Hewlett-Packard wants EDS
- Hackers create their own social network
- More top stories
 Since You AskedA weekly storage column from storage analyst, Steve Duplessie of the Enterprise Strategy Group |
Eliminate SPAM, Gain Productivity Learn all about the dangers and the costs of spam in all its forms – from stock-touting to spreadsheet. Also, understand the drawbacks of traditional hardware- and software-based defenses – and the unique benefits of MessageLabs multi-layered, managed Anti-Spam solution; as illustrated by a real-world case study where MessageLabs stopped spam cold.
Download this white paper now!
See more Whitepapers |
 The Spy FilesFor Congress to do anything that helps protect consumers and the critical Internet infrastructure as a whole, it must pass laws that require proactive processes to protect computers, not that tell people how to deal with the resulting mess, says Ira Winkler. Click here to read the latest column by Ira Winkler |
The Impact of Messaging and Web Threats Messaging, internal and Web-based threats are increasing in number and severity. The risks to organizations large and small are real problems that users and their employers face if they do not establish adequate defenses against this growing variety of threats.Read this Osterman Research paper to learn how organizations must implement a layered defensive strategy to protect against all types of threats and how Sunbelt Software can help. Download this white paper now
|
CIO
Computerworld
CSO
DEMO
GamePro
Games.net
IDG Connect
IDG World Expo
Infoworld
The Industry Standard
ITworld
JavaWorld
LinuxWorld
MacUser
Macworld
Network World
PC World
Playlist
Copyright © 2008 Computerworld Inc. All
rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium
without express written permission of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited.
Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are
trademarks of International Data Group Inc.
|
