Several of the company’s major app builders are calling for safeguards to ensure their work is not de-valued by imitations.
CRN reveals that some of Xerox’s app builders are concerned about the safety of their apps and are feared their investments may be “de-valued by a wave of imitations or duplicates.”
“You don’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars building something and then have somebody look under the hood of it and go, ‘Hmm, I bet I could make a lot of money with that thing,'” explained Patrick Leone, who is the founder and CEO of the Indiana-based MidAmerica Technology.
Leone explained that “he’d like to see Xerox’s Personalized Application Builder (PAB) program have a provision where apps that make it into the studio are protected through a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).” He also went on to say that MidAmerica “had spent tons of money with trademark companies and on NDAs with teeth to safeguard apps that catch on such as the company’s SignMe one-step signing app.”
Rui Ferreira, the director and general manager of Xerox’s Solutions Business Unit, explained that Xerox ensures its partners sign the requisite documents, including NDAs.
“We have both legal protection and some software protection for the partner’s IP,” Ferreira told CRN during Xerox’s Personalised App Builders forum. “If we were ever to detect partners trying to use an app to go into someone else’s business, they’ll be booted out of the program very quickly.”
Josh Justice, the president of JustTech, said that he “encouraged other solution providers to pursue licensing agreements rather than investing resources in a push to create apps that are already available to Xerox partners.”
“Look to other partners, learn from them, grow with them, but don’t steal something they’ve already done,” Justice said. “If we’re just stealing each other’s stuff, then we’re just spinning our own wheels and we’re not moving the ball forward.”
Ferreira explained that “the process for building apps starts with submitting a proposal” and Xerox then reveals whether an investment has already been made in that area, though does not specify on what is being developed.
Xerox Europe’s head of solutions and services marketing, Mark Boyt, also revealed that Xerox will be making “peer-to-peer collaboration easier” via its impending app catalog, which should be available in 2018, though initially only to solution providers.
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