The Challenge of Corporate IP
Collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Salesforce’s Slack, Quip, Cisco’s Webex, Fuze and others have become very effective tools for engineering, software development, pharmaceutical, technology and other industries to manage teams that build and develop corporate Intellectual Property (“IP”). Certainly, many of these platforms will retain these discussions but usually only for a limited time and, once deleted, there is no longer evidence that the IP was developed internally.
With so many institutions working on similar challenging engineering tasks and the movement of one engineering team to a competitor, it has become extremely challenging for an institution to ‘prove’ that the design, the vaccine, the component was internally created. Breakthrough technologies such as Crispr and the iPhone (Apple v Samsung) have involved challenges as to which company developed the critical IP. In each case, the critical information was based on the evidence that the engineering teams developed and communicated the breakthrough before the other institution.
Securing Corporate IP
DataParser® is a widely used software tool to capture many types of communications and messaging. The platforms being used by developers can include complicated features like breakout rooms, private channels and chats where users are sharing code snippets and collaborating. It’s important to know which features are in use and if they can be collected. For instance, DataParser collects the participants in meetings including when they entered or left a channel or meeting. By capturing this information and pushing into archival platforms such as Microsoft’s Purview, Proofpoint, Google’s Vault or other repository, engineering and legal teams have full retention of all discussions available either in developing or defending institutional IP.
Many of the high-tech engineering and pharma companies are now using products such as DataParser to ensure that they have the critical development details that will allow a successful defense of their IP.
