Re: Dyson is a bit of an IPR zealot
Every engineering/science company in a competitive environment attempts to maintain details of their products a secret from their rivals. Once a product comes to market then it is protected by patents (many of which are not hot air nonsense) which mean that they can read and learn from published details (OK I know a number of pharmaceutical companies in particular maintain the details of manufacturing processes, often the difficult bit secret, patenting only the use of a new material). And patents have a limited life span - just see the number of Dyson copies on sale now at significantly reduced prices from the originals.
If they do not patent them, then potentially reverse engineering can throw them open to competition.
My company (small and very specialised) provides mathematical analysis and modelling services to a range of companies and government bodies. Leaving aside government work, much of our commercial work is highly sensitive. We maintain a high level of protection by being careful about (a) maintaining notebooks within our offices, (b) severely restricting external access to any of our production computing infrastructure and (c) keeping generally well respected barriers between projects that might present dilemmas of this sort.
This approach also has the benefit of making sure that most people do not take lots of work home with the - it is popular (half of our employees have significant shareholdings) and I believe it does improve work life balance for most.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
