In this very special occasion I would like to talk about protection on our works, please note that I am not really a fan of copyright (I appreciate them but doesn’t always put it in priority of my own works), this why it is special. Ideally almost nothing is in this universe is originally ours, most of them we just duplicate existing in conscious or not. It is not the result, it is the process and the hours we put together to it.

Sometimes ago, I help my wife building a so-called proposal for M3Nergy office preparation in Thamrin Building 16th floor, more about the company please click the link, the mention of the company is for not-to-be general purposed since I am sure a lot of other not doing things like they did to us, while it is not 100% their mistake but I would like to see it as my/our mistake.  The proposal consist of Layout Drawings, Item and Budget, 3d Drawings, Brochures and Samples from the vendors.

What we did was try to transform they need / requirements in to a solid and actual buy-able and build-able items so they could work in their new office. Sound simple enough, and usually it is not worthed to mention if in the end we didn’t gent the project, it is all about risk, we put trust to other party hoping to be our client. What to be underlined is how we manage the risks.

After long wait and several (now known to be) useless negotiation and consultation we didn’t get the project. No problems we always stop there and move on with our professional life. But something funny came out, we notice that they (or at least one person in-charge - not to be mentioned but to be known that it possible that this is a human and not company policy error) has use our drawings to gather other quotation from at least one vendor/supplier that we know of.

What do we loose?;

• Cost for communication, transportation during the consultation and negotiation. (Put this aside, probably below 500K IDR)
• Intangible asset of documents submitted earlier as a product of our Skills (Put this aside, lot of other people could build something like this)
• Hours we put (Not replaceable, but probably not worthed either)
• Professional pride (This bugs me a lot (I don’t dare to state why - since this is not my first-time either), and make me made a promise to myself not to do that to my partners)

What do we learn and encourage you to to the same?..

Let us protect our works, there are always risk which we have to take in this line of work, but say we make an agreement (this is according to a friend of mine working in legal division of some company) called a non-disclosure agreement signed by that other party when we submit our works to them. It simply contains our good intention to help them and in return ask them not to use our submitted works for their further unless stated otherwise. That way it is ok for us not to get the job/project but they are not allowed to use our work (which is not rewarded material or immaterial) for their further need (such as finding comparable prices).