As more and more of a company’s intellectual property is tied up in its source code, the possibility of that source code being misappropriated by employees or competitors becomes ever larger. As Nigel Jones explains in this blog posting, there are techniques available to examine the binary version of a competitor’s product, and then from the binary image determine whether there is sufficient evidence to show that they are likely using your IP.
In a recent case, Nigel Jones was approached by a company that suspected a business partner had mis-appropriated the source code and was now using it in a competing product. Prior to even being retained Nigel Jones was able to give them guidance on how to examine the competing product to determine if it was indeed using proprietary IP. Using this information, the company is now preparing to file suit. Presumably this will likely lead to the defendant being required to produce their source code for review, which will throw considerable light on whether the plaintiff’s IP has been stolen.
