Intellectual property: Protection

The importance of intellectual property right (IPR) protection can vary across outsourcing efforts. It may not be important for small, one-off web design projects, but becomes increasingly important as one moves into proprietary software & web development, business process outsourcing (BPO), and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).

The World Economic Forum includes a intellectual property protection index in their annual Global Competitiveness Report. The index is a compilation of survey results from business leaders in 133 economies. They are asked "How would you rate intellectual property protection, including anti-counterfeiting measures, in your country? (1= very weak; 7 very strong)."

Canada and the United States have some of the best IPR protection. China also ranks high, but it is worth nothing that the survey asks respondents about IPR in their own country. Historically, Chinese domestic business have not seen the negative impacts of infringements in the same way as international companies in China and thus might rate China higher. India ranks in the middle with the Philippines near the bottom.