The first question most Western teams ask us is about IP, and they are right to. An NDA is the start of that conversation, not the end of it. What actually protects a design is structural: who knows what, who holds what, and what is left on the factory floor when the run is over.
A confidentiality agreement sets expectations and gives you recourse. It does not, by itself, stop a copy. Relying on a signed PDF alone, especially without thinking about jurisdiction and enforceability, is the most common mistake we see. Treat the NDA as the floor and build real protection on top of it.
The strongest protection is that no single supplier sees your whole product. Critical modules can be built or programmed separately; final assembly and the parts that carry your differentiation can be kept apart from commodity sub-assembly. A factory that only ever sees one board cannot clone a system it never holds.
Be explicit, in writing, about who owns the mould tooling, the fixtures and the production files — and where they physically sit. Tooling you own is tooling you can move. Ambiguity here is how teams discover, too late, that they cannot leave a supplier without leaving their tools behind.
Firmware and keys are often your real moat. Program secured parts in a controlled step rather than handing images to the line; use secure boot and read-out protection; keep signing keys out of the factory entirely. A cloned enclosure is an annoyance. Cloned, unprotected firmware is the product.
For work in China, agreements written to be enforceable in the relevant jurisdiction — NNN-style terms covering non-use, non-disclosure and non-circumvention — carry more practical weight than a Western NDA translated and hoped over. We work under NDA as standard, and structure each engagement so that confidentiality is enforced by how the work is divided, not only by what was signed.
We work under NDA as standard and design the engagement to protect your IP structurally. Tell us what you are building and we will explain exactly how.
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