Protecting design ideas

Not at all easy. You can apply the standard protection methods such as patenting, but that doesn't guarantee that someone won't pinch your idea. If they do then your only recourse is legal action, which costs heaps. If the action involves offshore parties, then you're dealing in a bigger ballgame again, possibly different legal systems and having to send legal teams to other countries. Work it out yourself. Can you imagine fighting a case against a large company in China?

For starters you can put non-disclosure clauses in your contracts, but that doesn't guarantee anything, particularly if your IP is significant.

Best approach is probably to arrange things so that you only need to divulge stuff that doesn't give away your IP.

You can try sticking it all in one of the new secure FPGA's, like the Xilinx Spartan 3AN:

BUT, if you let them write the firmware then you could be giving the whole game away. It depends on how much of your design can be done in programmable hardware, and how much is done in firmware.

Dave.

It could be helpful to put a useless component or two in the design in a position that an expert witness could see serves no purpose, so that it is more obvious in any legal proceedings that they have ripped off your design. (Sort of like the two school kids that both made exactly the same errors in the maths test.) Same with any firmware, e.g. tell the judge to hold down these three buttons, and the screen shows "This code was stolen from Tim..."

Chris

There were several errors in the original IBM PC BIOS code which later allowed proving that some BIOS from Asian countries was copied from the original and not written from scratch as IBMs copyright required. These were errors discovered as time went on, not traps originally set to catch the copiers.

-- john G.

To protect your intellectual property you would have to minimise the information given to the subcontractor, such that they would only have enough infomation to construct the basis of what you require, but not enough information to build a fully working product. If you could develop the firmware locally the construction could be done overseas. Programming, final assembly and testing could be done locally.

If the engineering company that you want to use has experience in the field of your idea, ensure that your idea hasn't already been developed.

My first protection effort was around 1979, on a Z80 system, and 2716 eprom. I swapped D6 and D7 to the eprom & hardware, and placed version text into it, so that it would appear normal when read by a programmer. :-)

Trapped everyone, including me at times.

If I was in your position, I feel I would be getting the job done by two sources.

Get the manufacturer to create the hardware and diagnostic software that will fully test the design.

Using the diag source code, get some one you trust, to tune it to your needs. If you have all the I/O routines, tuning should be fairly simple.

As long as the diag program doesn't fully produce, what you want the final product to do.

Don...

Map makers do exactly this, due to the high cost of production and the ease of ripping off someone else's map.

Some part of the coastline will zig where it should zag, or zag where it should zig. Or a street name will be mispelled (or even be wrong). That way they know when some other company rips off their maps.

Cheers! Rick Measham

Thanks very much to all those that replied to my question.

I think the safest answer is to have two different sources design the product (one for hardware and one for software).

It would be great if I could get the entire design from one source as it would save a lot of time and money as this is estimated to cost in excess of

Once again thanks for all you help...

Regards Tim

Unless you put protection into the finished product, anyone may simply be able to copy your finished product.

And the software people will usually need some hardware to develop on, along with intricate details of how it works.

Dave.

Yes that is correct. however I would prefer to fight a legal battle with someone from Australia (Where I am form) rather than overseas.

Tim

Sure, but what's to stop someone from *insert country* buying your product and selling a copy over there?

If you are concerned with protecting your design, then you need to do it both at the product level (reverse engineering) and the sub- contractor design level.

Dave.

Its very likely its been done before these days... so you are likely wasting your time.

If you are not talking exotic materials properties issues then you *are* wasting your time.

Why cant this be done by engineers in Australia ?

Pointless these days, product lifecycle is so short its not worth the effort, be ahead of the competition with up to date designs,

If you product business plan doesnt have 8 digits then forget it...!

This is one, of many, recipies for disaster...

Human communications, especially in 21st century, suffers.

That is so cheap, doesnt gel if you want to protect it by patents or trademarks,

Seriously, budget $100K and up for any Supreme Court action,

Doesnt make sense though, for a $40K project, unless your business plan turnover is in the 8 digit range,

is it ?