Officials at the San Carlos-based Jolly believes an insider was responsible for the heist at its Mumbai research and development center. The company has now ceased all development at the center which was made operational only three months ago and frozen recruitment.
According to company sources a recent hire used a personal Yahoo! email account to ship copied files out of the firm’s doors.
The engineer’s Yahoo! account apparently allowed up to 100 Mb of free storage space allowing for the bulk transfer of files and data.
The code-swipe will force other US-based software development centers in the country to tighten up their own security. Most US companies force employees to sign contractual agreements that bar them from taking even small portions of source code outside of a development facility.
But the snail-like Indian legal system rarely enforces intellectual property rights in the country. It therefore remains to be seen what steps Jolly will take to prevent the rogue employee from distributing the code. Criminal proceedings against the employee remain a possibility.
Founded in 2000, Jolly Technologies is part of Jolly Inc, specializes in the development of bulk printing software. Its Print Studio 2.0 software product supports bulk printing of labels, barcodes, ID cards and other industrial print media and offers advanced database integration.
Apart from India, Jolly is also currently expanding its operations in Europe.
