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I've actually had to think about these issues quite a bit lately, for reasons I'm not comfortable disclosing, so I have a few observations that others might find interesting:

• In the most general sense, claims regarding specific inventions in which the employer was not involved (e.g. prior to employment) are not enforceable even if they're in the employee agreement.
• However, it can be more difficult than you might expect to prove that a specific invention was in your possession prior to employment. If you don't have something written down and in the possession of people you can count on to testify as to its provenance, you're on dangerous ground.
• Ideas tend to get entangled with one another. Even if you can prove ownership of one invention, the employer might come at you with claims regarding related or secondary inventions. The burden of disentanglement will be yours, and a sufficiently determined employer can sometimes rule out all possible expressions or means of implementation even while ceding ownership of the core invention to you.
• Beware the "doctrine of negative knowledge". This is the idea that, when you try to do something, you quickly find out many wrong ways to do it; this is called negative knowledge, and it is the property of your employer in the eyes of most courts. Jeff Merkey of Timpanogas Research Group is a well-known victim of this doctrine, and Novell vs. Timpanogas is a case with which anyone interested in intellectual-property law should be familiar.

In short, then, you can often win a battle over an invention but still end up losing the war. If you think you might ever want to work on something on your own that is in any way related to what you do at your job, make damn sure you know exactly where you stand with regard to these issues.

Okay, Jeff V. Merkey's company, the Timpanogas Research Group is a Microsoft ISV. Now this doesn't mean anything in itself, but some MS ISVs do have access to the NT code.

Here is a (google cached) post about some problems Merkey had with his open source NDS implementation - Novell wanted him to sign a NDA.

Read this:

The fact that he is working closely with Microsoft and a contributing to Open Source/Linux make TRG a legitimate threat. We may have NDS for NT and Linux, and are working with Caldera and Red Hat, but how are we going to walk that tight-rope of "seeding" NDS into Linux/Open Source market? Are we just going to wait for TRG to put Novell's NDS and NWFS "crown jewels" out as Open Source?

Jeff and David Gobel (wrote NTFS for MS, now consulting) can create a filter driver for ACL and Trustee management. This will work for NTFS and W2000 (completely new files system and disk structures). That would fill the gap for NDS for NT. Linux would actually be easier to implement. Then NDS would manage data on NT and Linux.

Now if this David Gobel person really did write "NTFS for MS", and now he has some kind of relationship with Merkey, Merkey's company or Linux, there could be a problem.

Also, read http://www.zd net .com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2426902,00.html for some more background (okay, it's ZdNet, so don't take it too seriously!)

Of course, I still don't know the details - just enough to annoy some people if I've got it all wrong!

Okay, Jeff V. Merkey's company, the Timpanogas Research Group is a Microsoft ISV. Now this doesn't mean anything in itself, but some MS ISVs do have access to the NT code.

Here is a (google cached) post about some problems Merkey had with his open source NDS implementation - Novell wanted him to sign a NDA.

Read this:

The fact that he is working closely with Microsoft and a contributing to Open Source/Linux make TRG a legitimate threat. We may have NDS for NT and Linux, and are working with Caldera and Red Hat, but how are we going to walk that tight-rope of "seeding" NDS into Linux/Open Source market? Are we just going to wait for TRG to put Novell's NDS and NWFS "crown jewels" out as Open Source?

Jeff and David Gobel (wrote NTFS for MS, now consulting) can create a filter driver for ACL and Trustee management. This will work for NTFS and W2000 (completely new files system and disk structures). That would fill the gap for NDS for NT. Linux would actually be easier to implement. Then NDS would manage data on NT and Linux.

Now if this David Gobel person really did write "NTFS for MS", and now he has some kind of relationship with Merkey, Merkey's company or Linux, there could be a problem.

Also, read http://www.zd net .com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2426902,00.html for some more background (okay, it's ZdNet, so don't take it too seriously!)

Of course, I still don't know the details - just enough to annoy some people if I've got it all wrong!

Seeing as how the company's Partners includes Novell, the Canopus Group, and Caldera, it seems reasonably likely that the enterprise comes with the "blessing" both of Ray Noorda and of Novell.

I'm sure the lawyers have "already talked," and were perhaps even involved with the initial establishment of Timpanogas...

"Our intent is to support existing Linux applications and drivers on an optimized NOS [network operating system] kernel that provides comparable performance metrics to today's Netware product line."

Thats all very nice to hear but when you take a look at the current server market (and the market shares offcourse) you will notice that Novell's share is decreasing very rapidly. Despite the fact that their NOS is a very robust and stable one its obvious, judging by the statistics, that the people want something else (more) nowadays. One could speculate on how people seemed to loose interest, IMHO one of the reasons is due to their own 'special' way of supporting TCP/IP but thats besides the point.

So I wonder why they want to focus on a complete new OS, which is based on a fading one, instead of supporting the currently available OS'ses even better? Sure; a Netware based OS which can also run Linux applications sounds nice but not necessary; if I need Linux support I'd just setup another server running Linux, its free remember?

As for the Netware part; if I'd have to choose between a (proven) stable NOS like netware or a new (free) product on the market I'd choose for Netware. Thats how it works when running a business. Even these folks feel the same on this: "Our first target shipment is geared to providing NetWare 4.11 NDS and networking capability in an open-source form to Novell's existing customers,". This also sounds very promising but don't forget that they plan to release somewhere in "the second half of 2001". How many Netware users will be left then? No one can predict this for sure but I really don't think it will be enough to make this whole product commonly accepted. It would take time, much effort and a lot of people supporting it.

If these folks really want to give out more support for Netware I'd personally suggest focusing on building and extending NDS support for Linux instead of selling it.

A recent article on /. discussed: IBM Takeover Of Novell?

Could it be that the powers that be at Timpanogas Research Group are looking for a possible buyout by IBM, too?

And following the link for this ("Open-Source Netware-Aware OS Under Consturction[sic]") article there is this:

Novell sued TRG in a Utah federal court three years ago in a bid to prevent the company from developing clustering software for tying groups of NetWare servers together.

IBM has considerable experience with lawyers and the cash to pay them. Could it be an attempt to find backing and protection at the same time?

Actually, the Timpanogas group was founded by an ex-Novell employee who was working on a
sophysticated clustering system for NetWare servers. Timpanogas continued that work. Novell sued
them and WON. Novell won bigtime, they had news reports all over the place about it, so I am a bit
surprised you are stating the opposite.

No. The case was settled out of court.

Jeff Merkey, the guy you're referring to, is also the architect of what became the Novell 5 kernel.

Reading the post on the linux-kernel list, I still don't get how is NDS related to Timpanogs? Even in
the leaked (whether true or forged) e-mail is stated that Timpanogas works on clustering, NDS has
little or nothing to do with them.

After the lawsuit was settled, Timpanogas pursued filesystems. You can currently download "Fenris" (Netware FS for Linux) from their web site. This will obviously be the basis of any future clustering project Timpanogas may pursue....

In the mean time, now that Fenris is finished, they're working on NDS for Linux / Windows.