Zinnov, a consulting and research firm lists out best practices to minimize the risk of offshore Intellectual Property loss.

1. Understand the Intellectual Property rights: The first and foremost step is to get an overview.

2. Set up an Internal Intellectual Property protection team: Intellectual property protection is an ongoing business responsibility and not a one time act. This makes it very critical to have a team in the company that is responsible for monitoring their intellectual properties, violations etc.

3. Examine the works that can be copyrighted/patented: An ongoing evaluation of the company’s work entities to identify copyright protection/patents is very critical. While copyrighting, it is important to make sure that such a protection will be valid in the country of the offshore activity or development.

4. Offshore vendor history: If the company is planning to enter into a vendor relationship with an offshore entity, extreme caution has to be exercised in understanding the vendor’s history with respect to any Intellectual Property violations.

5. Define IP violation clause: In executing a contract with the offshore vendor, define a separate Intellectual Property Violation clause and define the consequences of Intellectual property violation (Some companies sign the contract with the onsite entity of the offshore vendor as it gives them more leverage to take any legal action if they have to).

6. Seek a reference check for all the team members: It is not only important to look at the resumes of the offshore team but also very important to seek the appropriate references to make sure there is no IP violation case history behind the individual.

7. Pay attention to use of unauthorized software/third party products: As the saying goes, ‘Practice what you Preach”. Heavily discourage the use of unlicensed software or products both by the onsite and the offshore team.

8. Enforce a central repository: Enforcing a central repository for all the code and documents can not only improve the overall efficiency, but also help avoid numerous placeholders for critical documents and code.

9. Perform periodic IP audit: Perform a periodic IP audit and examine any new work that can be copyrighted, remove all the unauthorized software/product, reiterate the importance of IP, look into all the placeholders of the code/documents, assign appropriate ownership to the critical documents and update any change of ownership to patents.

10. Enforce the use of references: In all the company meetings/presentations make sure the appropriate references and credits are given to the owner of the work (be it internal or external). Making this practice a habit will raise the standards of the employees to acknowledge, respect and protect other people’s work.

11. Develop awareness: Protecting Intellectual Property can be greatly enhanced if all employees are sensitized to the company’s efforts towards IP protection. Some companies make IP protection a part of the performance plan for each employee and review it periodically.