How AIMIR Protects Your Confidential Information?
Client Confidentiality Is Always AIMIR’s Top Priority
It is frequent to see copyright disputes caused by the leak of confidential information. To avoid potential risks, AIMIR always emphasizes client confidentiality. Several methods are adopted by AIMIR to safeguard the confidential information including but not limited to the Non-disclosure agreements. Non-disclosure agreements (hereinafter called NDA) are documents in the form of the legal contract that can be agreed before confidential information is disclosed about a project, product or idea. Sometimes they are known as confidentiality agreements. The substance normally concerns the protection of sensitive commercial information and how much info can be shared with the third party.
External: Non-disclosure agreement for building design and construction
In the first place, some clients will emphasize the importance of the project and clarify their confidentiality requirements when initially sending design information to us for evaluating quotes. Therefore, we will sign a non-disclosure agreement with the client according to rules and regulations no matter the cooperation is successful or not. AIMIR shall adhere strictly to the NDA, under which disclosing original design documents or end products completed by AIMIR to the public or any third parties is forbidden. Generally, the establishment of NDA happens in situations when the projects are set for competitions or are under construction. The purpose of the remaining mystery before the completion of projects or the requirements of the designer or owner also leads to the signing of NDA.
In most cases, after reaching the agreement with clients, we shall sign the formal contract. Articles 8 and 9 herein clearly state the issues about the copyright:
8. If the data, writings or drawings provided by the first party for the CG production involve ownership or copyrights of a third party, the first party should make it clear at the very beginning. The signed agreement by both sides will be regarded as the guarantee that all data, writing, and graphics provided by the first party will not result in any act of tort. Thus the first party will be responsible for all possible acts of infringement.
9. The second party will safeguard the copyright of the data, writings, and drawings. If there is no additional agreement, the second party enjoys the right of publication of the final productions and can use them for advertising, exhibition, and business.
And the length of the confidentiality period depends on different situations. The short-term one can last only a few weeks until the organizer of the competition announces the results to the public, or the owner agrees to publish the results after the scheme is approved. The long-term period, however, may take 1 year or longer, sometimes even permanent. Regardless of the time period, it is our great hope that clients can inform us of an approximate time frame for the smoothly running of our confidentiality work. If there is uncertainty, we will follow up every six months or one year to ask for consent from our clients.
In case that the client signs the contract without carefully reading and reviewing all terms of the contract, under full consideration, we will confirm again with the customer by e-mail about confidentiality. If possible, we sincerely hope that the customer can provide more background information about the project for our convenience to perfectly project information or design concepts, and to share design creations or small stories that happened during the cooperation.
In summary, if the client neither clarifies the confidentiality requirements of the project at the beginning nor responds to our second inquiry promptly, we shall allow disclosure by default according to the terms of the contract.
Internal: confidentiality safeguard mechanism offers triple protections
Strict censorship
The work of media executive mainly involves sorting, inspecting and reviewing the information and work released by the company to ensure that all projects bound by the confidentiality agreements will not be disclosed by mistakes. Besides, our media executive will inform the corresponding project manager after regularly following up on the confidentiality cycle mentioned above to check whether to end the confidentiality responsibility.
Particular File Tag
AIMIR set up an independent folder particularly for each project, in which all relevant materials and information are stored. The word “confidential” will be attached in the folder name of the confidential project. The information under all such folders will be strictly kept confidential. (It will be deleted after the confidentiality period expires)
Confidentiality agreement
Employees in AIMIR are required to sign a formal “confidentiality agreement”. With no terms on the liability period, it will take effect permanently regardless of whether the employee is on or off the job.
It is clear that the agreement therein covers confidential technical documents, technical information, and trade secrets. The specifics including but not limited to the following:
1. Technical information, source files and technical materials (including project name, project location, models, CAD drawings, design manuals, hand-drawn drawings, references, process samples generated during the project and finished products, etc.)
2. Emails, related meeting documents, minutes and decisions, IM chat records, etc. during the cooperation process;
3. The name and contact information of clients as well as various documents and information storing in the computer terminal;
4. Other information that needs to be kept confidential during project implementation with clients;
Besides, in the situation of being asked questions such as client list and reference, the staff is required to report it to the company. After consulting with the clients, we will decide whether the project can be published and what information can be disclosed.
In conclusion, although confidentiality protection is costly and difficult, it’s our ideal to do the best in protecting client confidentiality.
Copyright of AIMIR
During the production, a series of copyright issues are involved in the process of the project production, such as 3D models created by us, the construction of CG scenes, lighting/material parameter settings, texture, materials in the later period, layers in PSD, etc. In accordance with the laws and regulations pertaining to copyright ownership, any following acts on original products created by AIMIR are strictly prohibited:
1. Selling on the Internet
2. Providing to the competitors for learning and imitating
3. Providing inspiration for the in-house team
4. Providing to the rivals for cheaper follow-up services
Generally, the source files mentioned above are not provided by AIMIR. The quotations we give only cover the final products. But if there are any special requirements for source files, please let us know BEFORE we start the project. We will evaluate the situation and adjust the price accordingly.
In a word, your project information is safe with AIMIR. We will stay true to what we believe and try our best to do what we can do to protect client confidentiality. If you have any projects that need to be visualized, please feel free to contact us.