Page 276 - (ISC)² CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide

and accomplishing the same objective. If you treat your source code as
a trade secret, it keeps it out of the hands of your competitors in the

first place. This is the technique used by large software development
companies such as Microsoft to protect their core base of intellectual
property.

Economic Espionage Act of 1996

Trade secrets are often the crown jewels of major corporations, and

the U.S. government recognized the importance of protecting this
type of intellectual property when Congress enacted the Economic
Espionage Act of 1996. This law has these two major provisions:

Anyone found guilty of stealing trade secrets from a U.S.
corporation with the intention of benefiting a foreign
government or agent may be fined up to $500,000 and
imprisoned for up to 15 years.

Anyone found guilty of stealing trade secrets under other

circumstances may be fined up to $250,000 and imprisoned for
up to 10 years.

The terms of the Economic Espionage Act give true teeth to the
intellectual property rights of trade secret owners. Enforcing this
law requires that companies take adequate steps to ensure that
their trade secrets are well protected and not accidentally placed
into the public domain.

Licensing

Security professionals should also be familiar with the legal issues
surrounding software licensing agreements. Four common types of
license agreements are in use today.

Contractual license agreements use a written contract between the
software vendor and the customer, outlining the responsibilities of

each. These agreements are commonly found for high-priced
and/or highly specialized software packages.