Confidentiality and IP Policy

Customer requirements, CAD files, drawings, BOMs, redlines, screenshots, project communications, and deliverables are treated as private project material. Access is limited to authorized DesignBench administrators and the assigned client, designer, or reviewer roles needed for the workflow.

Customer work may not be displayed in a public profile, portfolio, case study, assessment example, marketing page, or training dataset without specific written permission from the rights holder.

Ownership and licence rights for paid deliverables must be defined in the project-specific written agreement. Until that agreement is accepted, no transfer of project intellectual property is implied by an intake, upload, assessment, profile, or platform message.

Each party retains its pre-existing materials, methods, templates, software, trademarks, and know-how. Any permitted use of pre-existing material in a deliverable should be identified in the project agreement.

Users must follow project-specific confidentiality, storage, access, export-control, and deletion instructions. Information may be disclosed to service providers that operate the platform, to authorized project participants, when required by law, or when reasonably necessary to investigate security or abuse.

Suspected unauthorized access, disclosure, or loss should be reported promptly to DesignBench so access can be restricted and the incident reviewed.

Project files follow the documented retention workflow after project completion unless a written project requirement, dispute, security review, or legal obligation requires a different period. Clients remain responsible for maintaining their authoritative engineering records and backups.