Protecting intellectual property (IP) has become a key part of the outsourcing debate, especially as service providers are now offering more valued knowledge services that potentially create value outside the established physical walls of the organisation. Digitised content ends up everywhere and even in our non-work role as consumers, the rules around digital content are unclear. I mean, is it still really illegal to rip a CD that you have bought and paid for to an iPod or have they changed that rule yet?

Though most outsourcing contracts draw up some form of IP protection on a case-by-case basis is it also useful to be aware of what is going on in  digital rights management (DRM) – which tends to focus more on the ownership of content such as music or literature. I believe that as we advance more and more into knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) in our part of the business, all the cross-border intellectual property arguments we hear about involving Apple and iTunes will become more relevant to what we are doing in sourcing services, because we are talking about services that create knowledge and content.

A guy I know from my local BCS branch in north London, Jude Umeh, has just written a book about the whole debate over DRM and IP protection and he is going to give a talk about the subject in central London on 23 October (details here). I plan to go and hear what he has to say and to see if there is anything we can learn in our part of the industry from what is going on in the music and entertainment sector. In any case, it will be a good opportunity for a bunch of IT people to see who has got the biggest iPod song list.