BANGALORE: It is a sharp reversal of recent scenarios where Indian Information Technology players have been embarrassed by sting operations and disclosures of leakage of confidential information pertaining to foreign clients.

The police in Karnataka and Kerala are known to be investigating cases where Indian software developers have alleged that their intellectual property has been stolen by foreign companies.

Last week, the Cyber Crime Cell of the Bangalore police followed up a complaint by Eduquity Pvt Ltd, an Indian company providing human resource skills testing solutions, against the Indian end of the United Kingdom-based Thomas Assessments International. The allegation was that tests very similar to those developed by Eduquity were being commissioned by Thomas Assessments Pvt Ltd — with the help of a former Eduquity employee who was at present employed by the latter.

A search and seizure order was issued by the magistrate under the Copyright Act of 1957 and the Information Technology Act of 2000.

In a similar case, now being investigated in Kerala, an Enterprise Resource Planning software for the agro industry developed by another Bangalore-based company, ISmart Solutions, was allegedly taken by an employee working in its Kochi-based unit, and used to set up a new firm BT Tech Pvt Ltd to exploit it. The company formed was an Indian subsidiary of the Belgium-based BT International.

In addition to the civil and criminal cases, ISmart Solutions has also entrusted the matter to the Secretary, Kerala State Information Technology Department, a `fast track' procedure that the IT Act created.

Both these cases come against a background of global media hype about the alleged leaky environment of India-based outsourcing operations.

In April, some former employees of a Pune-based call centre were accused of stealing $300,000 from customers of Citigroup Inc. In June, the U.K.-based tabloid The Sun reported that its journalist, in a sting operation, had obtained account numbers and other personal details of customers of a U.K.-based bank by bribing a Delhi-based call centre employee.

Both these cases put Indian business process outsourcing players under a cloud for a few weeks but did not dent their reputation seriously because the alleged acts pertained to individuals rather than indicating systemic failure.

The two cases this week seem to indicate that threat to intellectual property is a `resident evil' in the industry — not something that can be tagged to India or any other nation.

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