This article from the Wall Street Journal highlights the dangers companies face regarding intellectual property theft.
Editor's Note: A California company alleged that an Internet-filtering program being pushed by the Chinese government contains stolen portions of the company's software...
Mr. Milburn said Solid Oak received an anonymous email Friday stating that Green Dam may contain parts of his company's code. He said engineers at the 15-person software maker, which is based in Santa Barbara, Calif., spent the morning comparing the two programs. Similarities they found include a list of CyberSitter serial numbers and an update that makes the software compatible with an old version of CyberSitter, he said.
"I am 99.99% certain that, if not the entire program, at least a good proportion of it is stolen CyberSitter code," says Mr. Milburn.
I think that this particular illustrates how important safeguarding intellectual property is as companies shift work to the country of China. While each company needs to weigh the overall cost benefit of outsourcing to China and other countries, companies need to fully understand that the laws in China simply do not provide the same protections provided by US Law.
Editor's Note: Some lawyers said that because the software will only be sold in China, Solid Oak faces an uphill legal battle, even if it targets U.S. companies.
"It's not a violation of U.S. copyright law if the computers are only sold in China", said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard University Law School. "The question would have to be resolved in a Chinese court under Chinese law."
Read this as "tough luck"! So in addition to the greater number of threats in China, companies must also know that their legal options for recourse are limited if their threats are exploited while doing business in China.
