Software has an outsized role in the economy contributing over a trillion dollars to the value of the US gross domestic product.

Some people have a visceral reaction to the word audit. They think the tax people are coming and will soon be pounding on the door.

Trade secret protection has become an increasingly important part of the arsenal of protections available for a company’s intellectual assets.

Because IP monetization covers a wide range of business and legal activities, it is important to provide some examples.

After termination or expiration, the company should require the manufacturer to provide extensive transition services to the company.

The licensing of the company’s trade secrets and other IP should be consistent with the company’s identification of its trade secrets and other IP and appropriately limited in scope.

While not always possible given local labor laws, to the extent possible, the company should require the manufacturer to adopt protocols to govern a termination of the manufacturer’s employees

The outsourced manufacturing agreement should require procedures that limit access to the company’s confidential information to specific

While the laws governing trade secrets differ slightly from country-to-country, common among nearly all these laws is that a trade secret is any information that is:

At first blush an audit sounds expensive, distracting and unnecessary. Let’s face it, we live in the age of the long tail