I am a system integrator. I delivered an Ignition Perspective project to my customer, and now the customer has informed us that they will be sharing the project backup with another vendor.
The other vendor can now open and copy:
My Advanced Stylesheet (stylesheet.css) – all my custom CSS
My Views and component designs – layouts, embedded views, property bindings
My Style Classes
Custom symbols / reusable components I built
All of this is real development effort and part of my company's IP.
My questions:
Is there any supported way to encrypt or hide the contents of project resources (CSS, views, style classes) from another Designer user?
Can Gateway-scoped theme files help for the CSS part, so at least the stylesheet doesn't travel inside the project export?
What do other integrators do — technically and contractually — to stop a customer from handing your work to a competitor?
The only method for protecting your IP in Ignition is to make a 3rd party module. Or use the law to sue your client, presuming your contracts account for this.
And you need a real lawyer to determine the latter.
It sounds like a review of the contract between your company and theirs is in order.
There is a chance that, unless previously-signed contract states otherwise, you will need to accept that the customer paid for the services you rendered, and that they own the IP & are free to do with it as they please.
I take care to check every client contract to ensure that I do not give up ownership of my IP. I do grant perpetual rights to my clients that are otherwise equivalent to ownership, for all editable resources I create.
In my not-so-humble opinion, if you need to force your client to use your services through IP restrictions, you've won a battle but lost the war. That client is likely to never use your services for anything else, ever, and not recommend you to others. The word will get out and your business will die.
Products, like 3rd party modules, are understood in the market to be a different thing entirely, like buying Ignition itself.
Actually, in the US, the contract must explicitly state that the buyer will own the IP. The default in copyright law, for anyone other than statuatory employees, is author ownership. IANAL, yada yada.