Article 24 | Scope and Application of Confidentiality

(1) Definitional Scope and Contextual Access: Alliance Members, technical contributors, and committee convenors acknowledge that participation in OpenBharat.net activities, OpenBharat.net Working Groups (OWGs), and supervisory reviews of the OpenBharat.net Governing Council (OBGC) may grant access to non-public information. Confidential Information under this Article is strictly delimited to:

• Unreleased normative specifications, pre-ratification draft guidelines, and candidate technical benchmarks cataloged prior to formal publication under Article 9;

• Empirical security audits, adversarial red-teaming datasets, model vulnerability reports, and unpatched zero-day disclosures logged within OWG safety tracks;

• Compute telemetry, private hardware testbed topologies, cluster allocations, and raw benchmark logs furnished in confidence by participating infrastructure partners;

• Commercial, financial, and operational details submitted by startups, MSMEs, or research labs during eligibility vetting or capacity audits; and

• Internal deliberative records, executive meeting minutes, and conflict-of-interest disclosures of the OBGC and the ISAIL Secretariat.

(2) General Public Commons Presumption: Consistent with open-source development practices, all source code commits, pull requests, issue tracker discussions, and public working group sprints are presumed to be open commons unless explicitly classified as Working-Group Internal or Restricted Executive pursuant to Article 9(4).

(3) Confidentiality Covenants and Safeguards: Where an Alliance Member or individual representative receives Confidential Information, such recipient shall:

• Maintain strict confidentiality and prevent unauthorized reproduction, digital leakage, scraping, or external dissemination;

• Exercise at least the same degree of care used to protect its own sensitive proprietary assets, and in no case less than reasonable commercial and technical security measures;

• Restrict internal access solely to employees, technical leads, and legal counsel with an operational need to know, provided such individuals are bound by written confidentiality covenants no less restrictive than this Article; and

• Immediately notify the Secretariat and the track Convenors upon discovering any accidental leakage, security compromise, or unauthorized digital exfiltration.

(4) Non-Disclosure of Institutional Onboarding and Vetting Deliberations: To protect the integrity of meritocratic evaluations and prevent market distortion, each applicant and admitted Alliance Member covenants not to disclose or publicize:

• Internal communications, reviewer notes, interview records, or preliminary scoring generated during the evaluation of any Alliance Membership or waiver application;

• Bilateral negotiations concerning compute credit allocations, tailored sprint milestones, or specific hardship exemptions; and

• The status, deliberations, or non-public reasons concerning the suspension, probation, or rejection of any current or prospective member entity.

(5) Recognized Exclusions: The confidentiality covenants under this Article shall not apply to information that:

• Is or becomes part of the public domain without a breach of this Charter;

• Was demonstrably in the lawful possession of the recipient prior to disclosure by OpenBharat.net, OBGC, or the disclosing member, as evidenced by contemporaneous timestamped records;

• Is independently developed by the recipient’s engineering or policy personnel without reference to or reliance upon the disclosed Confidential Information; or

• Is lawfully acquired from a third party free of any confidentiality restriction.

(6) Compelled Statutory Disclosures: If a Member is legally compelled by a court order, statutory investigative summons, or binding regulatory mandate to disclose Confidential Information, the Member shall provide prompt written notice to the ISAIL Secretariat prior to disclosure (where legally permissible) and cooperate with ISAIL in seeking protective relief or confidential treatment.

(7) Marking and Digital Protocol: All confidential materials shared within OWGs must be clearly designated as RESTRICTED or CONFIDENTIAL in document headers, repository tags, or initial verbal disclosures confirmed in writing within forty-eight (48) hours.

(8) Breach and Remedial Sanctions: Any material breach of this Article shall trigger an immediate administrative review by the OBGC. The OBGC, in concurrence with the Secretariat, may impose sanctions including:

• Revocation of repository access and termination of Convenorship standing;

• Immediate downgrade or termination of Alliance Membership status; and

• Assertion of injunctive relief or claims for civil damages through expedited arbitration administered pursuant to Article 2(3) of the ISAIL Charter.

(9) Survival of Obligations: The confidentiality covenants under this Article shall survive the expiration, withdrawal, or termination of an entity's Alliance Membership for a period of three (3) years from the date of formal exit, except that trade secrets, proprietary foundational model weights, and undisclosed critical security vulnerabilities shall remain protected indefinitely until publicly released by the lawful owner.