---
published: true
layout: post
title: When You Won’t Publish API Publicly But Freely Give Up API Intellectual Property Over To Cloud Services
date: 2025-03-17T09:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Portals
  - Access
  - Control
  - Intellectual Property
  - Artificial Intelligence
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/john-wayne-the-searchers-border-down-the-fence-line.jpg
---
Pushing back on making APIs available via a public portal is the top things I hear from enterprise leadership. Why would they want to just give away their road map and their digital resources to the competition? Those of us who understand the game and know the power of API gateways, authentication, and access control know better, but convincing leadership they aren’t giving away the farm is one of the most recurring discussions we tend to have. Where these conversation become even more frustrating is when you are perpetually having to convince leadership of the importance of having a public API portal and product catalog while you simultaneously see them freely giving up their intellectual property over to cloud services in these ways that exponentially more damaging that making an API publicly available.

- **OpenAPI** - The ability to design, structure, and iterate upon your APIs is your intellectual property, with an OpenAPI being just an output of that knowledge.
- **Data** - Freely giving your vendors access to your data stores while also operating via their platforms allow the value generated from data to go to someone else.
- **Cloud** - Operating the majority of your business in the cloud hands all of your operational intelligence to your vendor allowing them to repeat how you operate.
- **Artificial Intelligence** - Training vendor LLM on your APIs, process, data, and content ensures that you will not be in control of your core business capabilities.

Enterprises who have public API portals are not giving away their intellectual property. Proper API management ensures that you have more control over your digital resources and capabilities while ensuring they are available where your partners and customers need them. The usage of 3rd party cloud solutions that do not allow for the input and output of open standards and specifications, or provide on-premise or open-source solutions, means that you are freely handing over your intellectual property to these cloud services. Enterprises who don’t have a handle on their API operations and are effectively able to manage the delivery and sustainment of internal, partner, and 3rd party APIs are also more likely to adopt cloud and AI services without properly evaluating what they are freely giving away in the process--integration works both ways!