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kevin42 • today at 3:22 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

I'd highly recommend you revisit your protection of customer's IP. Considering that you require source files (not just the industry standard gerbers), your legal terms are very unfavorable to customers. This makes me uncomfortable because it makes my IP much easier to leak. As written, I cannot justify the risks given your agreement.

Nothing in the legal terms explicitly prevents your employees from using my designs for other purposes. If you leak my IP and I find out 13 months later, your terms prevent me from seeking damages because you only cover 12 months from manufacturing.

I like that you have an NDA that I can opt in to, but you should be offering the NDA by default when I upload the files. I should not have to go looking for it in your documentation.

Edit: I realize that there is also limited protection and a lot of risk using a Chinese manufacturer. But requiring source files makes it much, much, easier to look at my design, recognize what it's for, and reproduce it, or at least copy the innovative parts of my design.


Replies

seddona • today at 6:28 PM

You can upload Gerbers/ODB++ if you like. We also sign custom NDA's. We count many of the worlds largest corporations as customers so this is pretty standard.

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dyauspitr • today at 6:25 PM

It’s several steps up from Chinese manufacturers already however where they will almost certainly use your design for something else if it suits them and you have no protections.

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