Infosys Technologies (INFY)

Intellectual Property

Our intellectual property rights are critical to our business. We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark and design laws, trade secrets, confidentiality procedures and contractual provisions to protect our intellectual property. We currently have no issued patents. Five of our patent applications are pending in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and one is pending in the Indian Patent Office. We have three registered trademarks and several unregistered trademarks. We require employees, independent contractors and, whenever possible, vendors to enter into confidentiality agreements upon the commencement of their relationships with us. These agreements generally provide that any confidential or proprietary information developed by us or on our behalf be kept confidential. These agreements also provide that any confidential or proprietary information disclosed to third parties in the course of our business be kept confidential by such third parties. However, our clients usually own the intellectual property in the software we develop for them.

Our efforts to protect our intellectual property may not be adequate. Our competitors may independently develop similar technology or duplicate our products and/or services. Unauthorized parties may infringe upon or misappropriate our products, services or proprietary information. In addition, the laws of India do not protect intellectual property rights to the same extent as laws in the United States. In the future, litigation may be necessary to enforce our intellectual property rights or to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others. Any such litigation could be time-consuming and expensive.

We could be subject to intellectual property infringement claims as the number of our competitors grows and our product or service offerings overlap with competitive offerings. In addition, we may become subject to such claims since we may not always be able to verify the intellectual property rights of third parties from which we license a variety of technologies. Defending against these claims, even if they are not meritorious, could be expensive and divert our attention from operating our company. If we become liable to third parties for infringing upon their intellectual property rights, we could be required to pay substantial damage awards and be forced to develop non-infringing technology, obtain licenses or cease selling the applications that contain the infringing technology. The loss of some of our existing licenses could delay the introduction of software enhancements, interactive tools and other new products and services until equivalent technology could be licensed or developed. We may be unable to develop non-infringing technology or obtain licenses on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.

We regard our trade name, trademarks, service marks and domain names as important to our success. We rely on the law to protect our proprietary rights to them, and we have taken steps to enhance our rights by filing trademark applications where appropriate. We have obtained registration of our key brand “INFOSYS” as a trademark in both India and in the United States. We also aggressively protect these names and marks from infringement by others.