The StingOn a typically steamy New Delhi day in late August 2002, Nenette Day walked into the Ashoka, one of the city's best hotels, for a meeting with Shekhar Verma. Verma had been fired from his job at Geometric Software Solutions Ltd. (GSSL), an outsourcer based in Bombay. He claimed to have the source code for SolidWorks Plus's 3-D computer-aided design package, which GSSL was debugging. Verma had contacted a number of SolidWorks' competitors and offered to sell them the source code. Day, an American, had taken the bait and flown to New Delhi. After confirming that what Verma possessed was indeed SolidWorks' source code, Day began negotiating on price, eventually bargaining him down to $200,000 for the code. The deal struck, Day got up and left the room. Then agents from India's Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI) swept in and arrested Verma. Day was not arrested
Offshore Outsourcing: Big Savings, Big Risk
U.S. companies continue a pell-mell rush into offshore outsourcing of software development. Those that haven't stopped to look at global intellectual property law are in for a big surprise.