“The
most valuable business commodity is Trust! For any successful business,
there must be a higher level of trust between the two parties. But it
is next to impossible to trust over someone when the business will run
over a unique idea or intellectual property instead of any tangible
property. Isn’t? There are many burning examples
where the business man has reached to a great level with the help of
other’s idea being stolen. Even one of the top IT giants in the industry
had made its presence in the industry with the virtue of someone else’s
idea. In IT industry there is a terrific threat of loss of business
idea or we can say Intellectual property during the transaction, so it
is always recommended to take all possible measures to avoid any such
unpleasant experience”.
What is Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)? The
best way to keep something under your control is through a legal
agreement. Similarly, to keep your idea secret from others, you can make
an agreement with your business partner for the future of your hard
earned money. When you choose to outsource your application development
work to an offshore software development company,
you must process an agreement with them about the secrecy of your
intellectual property otherwise your idea may be executed by them in
their name and they will get all benefits of yours and you will end up
with a huge financial loss. To avoid this issue, you can take the help
of NDA i.e. Non Disclosure Agreement. NDA is a legal entity or legally
enforceable contract that prohibits the leak of your information in the
industry from the offshore software firm. It keeps every aspect into
consideration like no leak of intellectual property during and after the
development process by anybody who are associated with your project
development. There are many other things to consider as well for a good
business. We will consider them latter.
Safety and NDA:
IT industry is driven by an intangible idea or we can say intellectual
property. A good concept can make you billionaire if get executed
properly. Facebook, Twitter or Orkut all are nothing but a concept or
simply idea; but their execution was so beautiful that they become a one
website industry. This hints the importance of new concept or idea for a
successful business. If their idea would have stolen before the launch
of these products, then what would happen? They could never turn out as a
successful business model. So, while developing any application or
product, we must make sure that our idea is safe with the offshore
company otherwise we cannot achieve what we are dreaming for.
Non-Disclosure Agreement can definitely help you as a strong safety
measure.
Should you sign a NDA with an Offshore Software Development Company?
This is the biggest question regarding NDA. Yes, there is definitely
need of NDA for the success of your business; but the NDA should be
comprehensive enough. If you have not focused on every aspect of
security threats for your application or product then, NDA is simply
worthless. Make sure that the Non Disclosure Agreement that you are
going to sign with your offshore software firm is really beneficial for
you. Because sometimes, some unreliable software companies hide some
terms and conditions in the NDA and that might create a big problem for
you in future. Imagine they have prepared a Non Disclosure Agreement for
you regarding keeping secrecy of your idea during the development
process. But if you disconnect your relation with them for some reason
during the process then what would happen? Will they still continue to
keep your idea secret or not? If they will start a new product with your
idea and launch it in the market before yours then what will happen? It
can create heavy loss for you. So you should read each and every terms
and conditions of the agreement before you sign it with your partner.
You should check every detail of the NDA and if something is missing you
should ask for modification before you sign up.
Make sure you have taken all possible steps before preparing a NDA:
Signing a Non Disclosure Agreement with your partner is a good idea;
but again it should be compressive enough to keep your intellectual
property safe for longer. It is always recommended to prepare your NDA
with the consultation of legal advisors from both parties. Sometimes,
some rules are followed strictly in a country while it has no
significance in a different country. So, it will create problem in
future. For a secure business, you should consult legal advocates from
both locations i.e. from yours and from the land of developing country
so that you can prepare a strong NDA for your concept. There should not
be any loophole in your NDA. For the same; you can take help of any
other businessman who have experience in outsourcing project to a remote
location. His experiences will definitely help you lot while preparing
the NDA. He can inform you all possible threats associated and
accordingly you can access and prepare a better and stronger NDA.
It can avoid all possible threats in your business:
With NDA, you can avoid all possible threats of loss of information
about your concept only if it is really detailed enough. Once you able
to prepare it properly with all possible consideration it will help you a
lot till the end of your project. Few important considerations are:
must include all members of the development team of the offshore
software firm in your NDA; because they may disclose it to someone else
or even on the social networking sites. So, you must enforce them in
prohibiting from these types of behaviour. 2ndly, what would be the time
period? Usually, people keep it up to the end of the project, but that
is not at all wise!! You should keep some extra time beyond the project
duration for your safety; something like extra 2 years or so on sounds
better. Now, you should also ask for extremely tight security of your
project codes, designs and discussions with the developers or project
manager; because they are the core element of your project. The offshore
software firm should be asked to sign NDA from all its associated
employees to avoid any leakage of information in the process. If all
these things are considered and made available in the NDA, then you need
not to bother about your intellectual property and have a peaceful
sleep at night.
At
Mindfire Solutions, we are experts in offshore small team software
development and we have been serving our 300+ esteemed clients more than
15 years now and have executed over 1000 projects in various
technologies and domains. If you have any custom application ideas in
mind and need our expertise, please feel free to write to us at sales at
mindfiresolutions dot com and we will revert back within a business
day. You can also avail our limited period risk-free trial offer now.
