Breach of confidentiality - 'The cat is out of the bag'

Despite so many precautions and binding agreements, it is not very unusual to have a breach of confidentiality or the leakage of the project. There is definitely shock and disbelief on having a well guarded design or project leak out into the market , the net outcome is to do a hunt asto who could be the culprit, often with no clear answers.

However in some cases there are clear answers but one does not know as to what action to be taken. Here is a case with the names changed to avoid the ' Breach of Confidentiality' !

Alto was a big company in India selling a premium brand of Biscuits. Alto wanted to do a celebration series of their Brand and source packaging from a very reputed company in UK , Parkville Inc. The Packaging team in Alto tied up all the aspects of the confidentiality agreement and the development progressed with full speed. The project head at Parkville built in a clause that the packaging would be ultimately sourced from a company in China to ensure lower costs and speedy delivery. The prototypes were developed and changed several times. Ultimately the prototypes were approved by Alto but the bulk delivery did not happen as the Brand plans changed and the project got postponed.

Several years later a company from UK, Briganza, selling similar packaging participated in an International Packaging fair in India. The packaging team of Alto who were visiting the fair got a complete shock and were in for a disbelief when they saw their project prototypes displayed by Briganza with great pride , indicating as if it was their development. On checking out Briganza explained to Alto that they had not manufactured it but had got it done from a company in China who are their partners for such packaging. On further checking out the Chinese partner turned out to be the same as the one Parkville had used for the development. There was more to the story, the project manager from Parkville had moved to Briganza and claimed rights over the development.

The net result for Alto was a leakage of their project and thus a breach of confidentiality. The answers one need to seek is that who should be blamed for this and what action could be taken.

Is Parkville to be blamed , the Chinese party, the project Manager or the Briganza who were trying to pass it off as their work.

Such breach of confidentiality is not uncommon , the challenge comes asto what action to take and against whom, specially when one is working across continents and encounter diverse laws.

Packaging has to take lessons from such experiences and work out the proposals and agreements trying to prevent the 'Cat to be out of the Bag'.