contract-law breach-of-contract
Can a coder from Pakistan steal my code and sell it worldwide?
<p>Say I hire a team from Pakistan to help me develop a SaaS Product. Can any legal measures protect me if the team decides to steal the product, publish it in the cloud and start generating money from it?</p>

<p>A legal measure that can protect you is called a contract. See <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/6263/what-is-a-contract-and-what-is-required-for-them-to-be-valid">What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?</a> A formal contract will codify that you own the IP, they are working for hire, they are not to use or share the code with anyone else, etc., and will outline the penalties under international and Pakistani law.</p>

<p>But good luck enforcing your copyright or suing for damages if they do take your code for their own. See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Pakistan" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Copyright law of Pakistan - Wikipedia</a>.</p>

<p>You'd have a contract, likely with the outsourcing company, and you could sue them for damages. It's their responsibility to hire software developers that don't steal your code. A small shop might just close down and you get nothing. A billion dollar company would probably settle instead of going to court and destroying their reputation, or closing up. </p>

<p>If it's "published in the cloud" you could probably contact the hosting company. Which would for legal reasons remove the software rather than risking to be sued. Apart from that, it depends on which courts you are willing to go to and what these courts will do to help you. A US court might be quite willing to order these guys to stop, but that order might have no effect. For a court in Pakistan, I have no idea what it would cost, what your chances are of winning against someone in Pakistan, and how hard it would be to enforce a judgement or collect damages. </p>
