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Intellectual Property Security: Don't Lose Your Head

Intellectual property isn't always easy to identify. It's even harder to protect. Here's how CSOs can work with others to protect their companies' future.

By Simone Kaplan

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Employees sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) when they join the company, and Pontrelli underscores the obligation of sticking to that promise. He lets employees know how losing intellectual property hurts the company at every level. "We all rely on each other to protect our trade secrets," he says. "Maintaining the integrity of those secrets is the reason we're able to hand out bonus checks at the end of the year. So it affects everyone if something happens." Pontrelli also goes over the correct way to use technology to minimize the likelihood of data theft, such as using e-mail securely and saving electronic data in a consistent, safe manner so that no one outside the company can access the information.

W.L. Gore's engineers, technologists and PhDs receive a different presentation from the legal department that reviews the proper way to talk to vendors, suppliers and reporters, and how not to give out information. "Our employees are brilliant people, but when you put them on the phone with outsiders, they're not necessarily thinking about what they should or shouldn't say," Pontrelli says. "Unintentional sharing of confidential information is an area we address with regular IP awareness presentations. The litmus test for all of us to ask ourselves is, Would I know this information if I didn't work here, and would my biggest competitor want this information?"

In 2000, W.L. Gore created an intellectual property committee to oversee communications with external entities as a major part of its efforts to safeguard its assets. If someone in the company wants to be quoted in a magazine, file for a patent or work with a new supplier, he has to go through the IP committee. "It's a single point of review that prevents sensitive information from getting outside the company," Pontrelli says. W.L. Gore is divided into four large divisions, and before the IP committee was formed, divisions would often make decisions about what information could be released. "There was no consistent approach, and a division's business interest often dictated what information was released without consideration," he says. "The root of the IP issue is people. We had to find a way to influence the attitudes and behaviors of our employees so they would be more aware of the need for and ways to protect our intellectual capital."

As part of the IP protection effort, W.L. Gore now has a call information center, where employees can forward all inquiries about the company. The center's staff is carefully trained in the art of sniffing out social engineering attempts and answering questions without giving any confidential information away. Now, if someone receives a pretext call, it gets forwarded to the information center.