IP laws lax, but US firm bets on India
In July 2002, when the Concorde-based SolidWorks contracted Geometric Software Solutions (GSSL) in India to debug SolidWorks 2001 Plus, little did the company realise that it will soon be in trouble.Shekhar Verma, a GSSL employee, who was involved with the debugging, resigned from the company after allegedly copying the source code and later, says SolidWorks, began selling it via E-mail to US software companies.
US law enforcement authorities subsequently set up an undercover sting and eventually arrested the employee in a hotel in New Delhi. It's not just teenagers and hackers who are using software illegally. Adults, including some engineers, are doing it too. Outsourcing has brought on its wake a new crime, that of software theft.
And yet, U.S. companies continue to see a benefit from hiring Indian employees. Is it a calculated risk, or is the risk overstated? Who knows, but it doesn't seem to have deterred many companies who've decided to do business there, which is their right.
and these are only the stories we hear about. imagine what is really going on over there - how much takes place under the table, or that is covered up by US executives.