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Media
and Press releases - As published in 'Business
Standard' news paper. |
| Combating
digital IP theft Web content is amongst the
simplest to copy and transmit |
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A talent development major, which offers
innovative classrooms and e-learning solutions
to students in over two dozen countries,
faces an obvious business threat: the replication
of its course material and curriculum by
competition. It also faces an insidious
threat from 'coaching classes' and private
tutors. Two decades of creating education
content, modules, processes and innovations
can be copied in minutes to a computer and
used by others. It's not very different
for an architect who creates his designs
and submits them to his client. The client,
meanwhile, has half a dozen architects submitting
designs for the same project. Finally, the
client picks and chooses the best features
from all the submissions, and asks one of
the architects to create a final version.
It sounds like business as usual but in
reality it is an infringement of Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR). Put bluntly, it is
theft. Intellectual property fraud threatens
to be the single biggest economic crime
of the 21st Century, especially because
of the increasing amount of digital content
being created, sold and transmitted across
the world.
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Not surprisingly, the security market is worth
a lot. An analysis of international trade
data suggests that up to $ 200 billion of
internationally traded products could have
been counterfeit or pirated in 2005. This
amount is larger than the national GDPs of
about 150 economies. The figure does not include
non-tangible pirated digital products being
distributed via the internet. If these items
were added, says The Economic Impact of Counterfeiting
and Piracy study published by the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development
in 2007, "the total magnitude of counterfeiting
and piracy worldwide could well be several
hundred billion dollars more."
Naturally, solutions to protecting IP are
the holy grail of the creative business. Writers,
artists, designers, architects, software developers,
gaming companies need to not only share their
work, but also keep it protected from unauthorised
transmission and usage. Even lawyers and bankers
need to keep their work from being illegally
or surreptitiously copied and reused in a
world that is going rapidly digital. The traditional
solution is to keep all files and data protected
using simple user name login and passwords
or use serial number pair schemes. These work
like digital locks. Imagine a lock that needs
a key to open it and you know what most security
today amounts to - breakable. Biometric sensors
and encryption are making things more difficult
for pirates, but the inconvenience caused
in some use-cases cannot be overlooked.
The answer to these problems has been created
by a 15- person Bangalore-based startup called
Trinity Future-In. Their goal: to secure digital
assets and software assets, to curb the unauthorised
duplication of digital assets and to provide
secure distribution media for both online
and offline assets. Trinity has, amongst its
advisors and mentors Chairman and CEO of Encore
Software Vinay Deshpande, and Tata Services
legend and the person behind the success of
Titan Industries Xerxes Desai. Says Trinity
Future- In Chairman David Lobo, "You
can't imagine that a solution to the problem
could emerge from a humble garage in Bangalore,
could you?" Honestly - not really.
Trinity creates a method of protecting digital
files that does not use a lock and key system.
In this solution files become invisible or
inactive and it simply does not let anyone
access the files that assist data duplication.
Critically, the digital data remains secured
whether it is inside or outside the security
device. Some Trinity Cervtain products are
capable of creating a log of all attempts
to tamper with the system with computer serial
numbers records and the date and time of the
attempt.
Trinity's series of data protection products
include MyIP-Vault aimed at the B2C retail
market, researchers, law firms, designers,
service and education companies; eS-Vault
that is aimed at game developers, software
developers, multimedia presentations, corporate
presentations and tutorials; and the D-Vault
aimed at the health sector, defense companies,
universities, database management companies
and training institutes. Trinity has applied
for 13 patents, 4 of which are in the US and
the first one of which has been granted. Next,
Trinity plans to launch data protection products
for web content that should attract considerable
interest. |
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There
are different kinds of Intellectual Property
and it helps to understand how each is protected:
Artistic creation in areas of the arts such
as poetry, books, scripts, plays, paintings,
illustrations, caricatures, cartoons, comics,
photographs, music, films and software are
protected through copyright. Technological
inventions can be protected through patents
which need to be filed for and then granted.
Characteristic features like words, symbols,
colours, shapes (what we know as logos) and
even sounds that distinguish a product or
service from another are protected by trademark
rights. Specific appearance of things like
vehicles, phones, watches, pens and white
goods have design protection. Geographical
indications (such as Champagne) and trade
secrets are also types of intellectual property.
Web content is amongst the simplest to copy
and transmit - text, images and video worth
millions are copied routinely, affecting genuine
businesses. Take the case of Shriram Adukoorie,
whose web and mobile based local search company
Ask Laila creates information on events, commercial
outlets and public places that is carefully
collated and verified for users. Says Adukoorie,
whose company has been funded by Matrix Partners,
Lightspeed Venture Partners and SVB India
Capital Partners, "We have a dedicated
team at Ask Laila that makes phone calls to
verify the accuracy of the content we have
in terms of event details, address and contact
numbers. There's a lot of hard work that goes
into this. But automated spiders from competitors
and other sites crawl our content relentlessly.
We have had to block such spiders, but the
companies that use these methods are smart
and they keep changing their IP addresses
so that blocking gets difficult. We have extensively
watermarked our data and are really interested
in companies that provide such tools and software
to protect content."
The Trinity products work in simple ways.
Course material can be displayed on a computer
by the user but cannot be copied and therefore
cannot be transmitted. In addition, a user
cannot make a "screen dump" either
on a computer's clip board and transmit it
or print the screen (normally done using the
"PrtSc" key).
"I believe the product is revolutionary,"
says Lobo "not evolutionary." Tests
conducted on some of the products by the Standardisation
Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) division
of the Ministry of Communication & Information
Technology suggests that the product is sound.
"The test cases employed and the results
obtained conform to the claims made by Trinity
Future- In with respect to protection of stored
information," says the test result.
According to an IDC report called Worldwide
Information Protection and Control (IPC),
2007-2011 Forecast and Analysis: Securing
World's New Currency, the market for data
protection products in 2009 is $2,055 million.
"Our products are priced very reasonably
compared to the security levels provided -
a negligible cost to keeping your IP protected,"
says 27-year-old Sathish BV an expert in the
field of information security who is also
one of the inventors of the products. And
in the low price could be the key to Trinity
Future-In's success. |
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