Home / Guides / Sourcing

Protecting your drawings when you send them to a shop overseas

July 3, 2026

Most buyers worry about intellectual property in the wrong order. They focus on the contract and neglect the two things that matter more: what they send, and who they send it to.

This is a practical guide, not legal advice. For anything patentable or regulated, talk to a lawyer in your own jurisdiction as well.

Decide what is actually sensitive

Very few machined parts are sensitive on their own. A bracket is a bracket. What is usually sensitive is one of these:

• The assembly and how the parts work together
• A specific geometry that took real development, such as a flow path or a sealing arrangement
• The material and process combination that makes it work
• Your customer list, which is often visible in a part marking or a drawing title block

Sorting your parts into sensitive and ordinary takes an hour and changes how you handle everything afterwards. Most of your parts can be quoted freely, which saves your caution for the ones that deserve it.

Control what leaves the building

Strip the title block. Remove your customer name, the end product name and any project code. A drawing that says which product it belongs to is worth more to a copier than the geometry.

Send the part, not the product. Quote individual components rather than the full assembly, unless the shop is assembling it.

Stage the information. A PDF drawing is enough for an approximate quote on a simple part. The model goes to the shortlist. The full tolerance and inspection scheme goes with the order.

Mark your files. A footer with your company name and a confidentiality line costs nothing and makes provenance obvious later.

Keep the finished design out of the first conversation. If a part is genuinely novel, quoting a slightly simplified version is a legitimate way to test a shop before it sees the real thing.

Use an NDA properly

An NDA is worth signing, and it is worth knowing what it does. It establishes that the information is confidential, records what was shared and when, and gives you a basis to act if something goes wrong. It will not stop a determined bad actor on the other side of a border.

Practical points:

• Sign it before you send the model, not after the quote comes back
• Name the jurisdiction and accept that enforcement is slow and expensive anywhere
• Include a clause that the shop will not use your tooling, fixtures or programs for other customers
• Say who owns the fixtures you paid for, and that they must be returned or destroyed on request
• Keep it short. A two page NDA gets signed. A twenty page one gets ignored or negotiated for a month

The commercial habits that matter more

Own your tooling in writing. If you pay for a fixture, it is yours. Say so on the purchase order.

Keep the critical step in house. For some products, one operation defines the value: a proprietary coating, a calibration, a final assembly. Keeping that step with you removes most of the copying risk from everything else.

Split across suppliers for assemblies. If no single shop sees the complete product, no single shop can reproduce it.

Pay properly and on time. The most common reason a supplier starts selling a design elsewhere is that the relationship stopped being worth protecting.

Register what is registrable. If a design or a mark matters commercially in a market, register it there. Doing so before a product launches is far cheaper than arguing afterwards.

What to expect from a serious shop

A shop that handles confidential work well will:

• Sign a reasonable NDA without drama
• Ask who owns the fixtures rather than assuming
• Not show your parts in its marketing without asking
• Keep drawings on controlled machines rather than in a group chat

You can test the last one indirectly by asking how drawings are distributed on the floor and what happens to superseded revisions.

How we handle it

Your drawing goes to us and to the one shop that machines the part. Your name and company are not passed on unless you ask for it, and you can have an NDA in place before any file moves. Uploaded files are kept for a limited period and then deleted, as set out in the privacy policy.

A staged disclosure plan

For a part you consider sensitive, work in three stages rather than sending everything at once.

Stage one, the description. Part type, material, envelope, quantity, tightest tolerance and deadline, with no files and no product context. That is enough for a supplier to say whether the part is a fit and roughly what it will cost.

Stage two, the shortlist. NDA signed, PDF drawing with the title block stripped, model if the geometry needs it for an accurate price. Two or three shops, not ten.

Stage three, the order. Full drawing package, inspection requirements, material certificates, marking and packaging. By now you have chosen and the exposure is limited to one supplier.

Each stage costs you a day or two and removes a category of risk. Skipping straight to stage three with six shops is how designs travel.

What to do if something goes wrong

If you see your design offered elsewhere, collect evidence before you write to anyone: screenshots with dates, the listing, the seller details and your own records of what was sent and when. Then decide commercially rather than emotionally. In practice the fastest remedies are usually a platform takedown request, a letter from a local lawyer and moving your work elsewhere, in that order. Court action across borders is slow and rarely proportionate for a single part.

If a part is sensitive, say so in the first message and we will hold the files until the NDA is signed. When you are ready, send the drawing, and the guide on vetting a shop covers how to judge who is on the other end.

Questions we get on this

Keep reading

• How to buy machined parts from Vietnam without running a supply chain
• Machining lead times, and the four things that actually set your date