IP Attorney Matthew Prewitt: "It is getting easier and easier to misappropriate large volumes of highly valuable data without leaving any clear trail."
Drew Greenblatt can find his products easily on the internet. There are 20 companies in India, he says, that have pictures of his products on their sites for sale. This isn't a demonstration of his company's international distribution, though. Instead, it is these companies simply taking his products and copying them.
"They just cut and paste and post them, and sometimes they don't even bother to take our name off the photos," says Greenblatt, president of Marlin Steel Wire Co., a Baltimore-based manufacturer of custom steel wire baskets and other products.
See Also: Manufacturing Innovation & Product Development Strategy
Greenblatt is one of a growing number of U.S. manufacturers concerned that intellectual property theft is striking at the heart of America's chief manufacturing advantage -- innovation. He says the investment that his company makes in creative engineers who develop custom designs and in software (more than $100,000 for licenses annually) in order to produce innovative products is all too easily negated by IP piracy.
Companies large and small are feeling the threat. On Nov. 30, 2012, Shansan Du, a former General Motors engineer, and her husband, Yu Qin, were both found guilty of stealing GM trade secrets related to hybrid vehicle technology and valued at $40 million. Du and Qin tried to pass the trade secrets to Chinese automaker Chery Autombile Co.
Many times, Greenblatt notes, companies aren't even aware that their secrets are being stolen. After giving a speech on the topic recently to a National Association of Manufacturers meeting, two CEOs of large companies came up to him and told him that the FBI had informed them that they had been the subjects of cyberattacks. In one case, the company's network had been infiltrated with software that was sending to China all their new designs every three months.
"It is getting easier and easier to misappropriate large volumes of highly valuable data without leaving any clear trail," says Matt Prewitt, an intellectual property attorney and partner at Schiff Hardin in Chicago.
