China and Your Intellectual Property Risk
As manufacturers continue to make investments overseas and integrate a global supply chain, intellectual property theft will remain a common issue. A recent article in the Economist highlights the significant increase in lawsuits in China for IP infringement. Over 15,000 lawsuits, up over 200% since 2003, are now active. China has made investments to improve the infrastructure within the Chinese judiciary system to handle this new surge in activity. However, the main beneficiary in this splurge continues to be Chinese lawyers, allowing a significant potential for continued corruption.
The risks of intellectual property theft and counterfeiting have not stopped manufacturers from flocking to China in order to gain the benefits of the workforce and its low wages. As organizations continue to make these decisions, they will be forced to mitigate the IP theft risk. The Wall Street Journal suggests that the starting point to protecting yourself against the loss of intellectual property is to educate your employees. Intellectual property rules can be difficult to comprehend and the proper training and a well established IP security process can alleviate many issues.
Unfortunately, most organizations do not have a trade secret management system in place that governs how employees handle IP information. In order to reduce the risk of intellectual property infringement companies will need to start effectively implementing such processes. Check out Xerox’ Thought Leader on Security - Dave Drab, CISSP. The whitepaper Enterprise Security – Tightening Your Grip on Trade Secrets outlines managing trade secrets for legal security. By applying the discipline of counterintelligence to their security model, manufacturers can more effective in managing trade secrets across the globe.
