In countries like India, where IT laws are weak, how do you protect your code?
Roy
12 replies
I have had a negative experience recently. So, I wanted to build a SaaS product and hired a small IT company for the development. We only had a mutual agreement and the work went on smoothly. We were building it on a open source license and my developer had all the codes in his online repository account. When the product was ready I started to market the product and got a few clients within a month. Seeing the success and potential of the software, my developer started to market the product on his own without informing me. He sold it to a French company and when I came to know about it he said he will give me a minimum percentage of the sales. But, he wants to sign a legal document with a lot of ifs and thens. He has all the code at his disposal. I had no choice but to back off from the project!
Now, I am building a different product and want to know how I can protect my code so as to protect my interest.
Can you help?
Replies
Kiril Gantchev@kgantchev
Step 1: always keep your code in your own (private) repository :)
Step 2: if you're paying people to develop your product, ensure that you have a contract for their services, an NDA and Confidentiality and Invention Assignment Agreement
Step 3: sign these documents with your developers
Step 4: add your developer to the repository
Reference for the CIAA: https://www.upcounsel.com/confid...
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@kgantchev Thanks a lot Kiril!
Oh wow, but this is very common. So to protect yourself, you write a legal document. Spend some money on lawyers, establish a company and create a legal agreement between you and the developer.
BTW, technically its his code, not yours 🤷♀️ You must be happy that he is willing to give you a minimal compensation. This is a dog eat dog world.
All the best.
@gogloballakshmi Yeah!! Thanks Lakshmi!
I'm trying to understand what you mean by mutual agreement. However, you should still sign an agreement and this time let your developer earn a percentage of your income.
Register a company and let the developer be a shareholder worth his agreed percentage. That way, you are protected.
If he sells the code to another company, that's a sweet legal case. You'll be rich!
@bosaonline Mutual agreement means without any legal documents. Simply based on trust!
@bosaonline I know it sounds crazy! But that's what I did!
This happened to a friend. Following to know what can be done.
NDA is a key.
@david_rodgers1 Right! Thanks David!
In my project Matumba com, I am making a distributed modular system, and I can give limited access to programmers. Each programmer can only deal with a small piece on the test version and does not see the whole picture