Slashdot Mirror

MJ writes "Evan Brown has finally lost his 7 year court battle over ownership of thoughts in his brain. Judge Henderson of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc (now Alcatel, USA) a Final Judgement granting DSC ownership of Mr. Brown's idea of a reverse compiler that Mr. Brown claims to have begun formulating twelve years before his employment at DSC and during his off-time while at DSC. Mr. Brown has received media coverage in print, televion and on the Internet: The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Wired, Computerworld. This rings similar to previous Slashdot articles on employer/employee IP rights."

MJ writes "Evan Brown has finally lost his 7 year court battle over ownership of thoughts in his brain. Judge Henderson of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc (now Alcatel, USA) a Final Judgement granting DSC ownership of Mr. Brown's idea of a reverse compiler that Mr. Brown claims to have begun formulating twelve years before his employment at DSC and during his off-time while at DSC. Mr. Brown has received media coverage in print, televion and on the Internet: The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Wired, Computerworld. This rings similar to previous Slashdot articles on employer/employee IP rights."

MJ writes "Evan Brown has finally lost his 7 year court battle over ownership of thoughts in his brain. Judge Henderson of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc (now Alcatel, USA) a Final Judgement granting DSC ownership of Mr. Brown's idea of a reverse compiler that Mr. Brown claims to have begun formulating twelve years before his employment at DSC and during his off-time while at DSC. Mr. Brown has received media coverage in print, televion and on the Internet: The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Wired, Computerworld. This rings similar to previous Slashdot articles on employer/employee IP rights."

MJ writes "Evan Brown has finally lost his 7 year court battle over ownership of thoughts in his brain. Judge Henderson of the 219th District Court in Collin County, Texas granted DSC Communications Corporation, Inc (now Alcatel, USA) a Final Judgement granting DSC ownership of Mr. Brown's idea of a reverse compiler that Mr. Brown claims to have begun formulating twelve years before his employment at DSC and during his off-time while at DSC. Mr. Brown has received media coverage in print, televion and on the Internet: The John Marshall Journal of Computer & Information Law, Wired, Computerworld. This rings similar to previous Slashdot articles on employer/employee IP rights."

(54)T-Dub writes "Cricket Media recently released 'Netflix Fanatic', an OSX based shareware app that lets you manage your rental queue without logging on to Netflix. An article on Think Secret reveals the reason behind it's mysterious disappearance. Apparently the developer's employer, Apple, has claimed ownership over the application's name and source code. The developer claims that under Section 2870 of the California Labor Code this is illegal. The law states that if a company has an employment agreement with provisions saying employees must assign the rights of their inventions to their employer, those sections do not apply if the employee developed it on his or her own time, without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information. Within Apple, there's unsubstantiated speculation that Apple wants to include the Netflix Fanatic code in a new version of Sherlock." Also, they're presumably not too worried with employee morale.

Jason told me about this extraordinary story of a guy who took 15 years to solve a problem in his free time, only to find that his employer for 2 years (DSC now part of Alcatel) is suing him for the idea. While this story started a long time ago, it's still plodding on. Although I was sceptical, Time, Wired, and others back his story. What's his idea? A method to convert machine code back to a high level language. Would it help him to GPL it? That would make it available to DSC, but would allow him to come up with the best implementation before they do. Since the idea would be out of the bag, DSC couldn't do very much about it, right? Update: 02/11 12:45 by S : Evan pointed out to me that if he GPL'd the idea, he'd be in contempt of court and stuck in jail.

Jason told me about this extraordinary story of a guy who took 15 years to solve a problem in his free time, only to find that his employer for 2 years (DSC now part of Alcatel) is suing him for the idea. While this story started a long time ago, it's still plodding on. Although I was sceptical, Time, Wired, and others back his story. What's his idea? A method to convert machine code back to a high level language. Would it help him to GPL it? That would make it available to DSC, but would allow him to come up with the best implementation before they do. Since the idea would be out of the bag, DSC couldn't do very much about it, right? Update: 02/11 12:45 by S : Evan pointed out to me that if he GPL'd the idea, he'd be in contempt of court and stuck in jail.

Jason told me about this extraordinary story of a guy who took 15 years to solve a problem in his free time, only to find that his employer for 2 years (DSC now part of Alcatel) is suing him for the idea. While this story started a long time ago, it's still plodding on. Although I was sceptical, Time, Wired, and others back his story. What's his idea? A method to convert machine code back to a high level language. Would it help him to GPL it? That would make it available to DSC, but would allow him to come up with the best implementation before they do. Since the idea would be out of the bag, DSC couldn't do very much about it, right? Update: 02/11 12:45 by S : Evan pointed out to me that if he GPL'd the idea, he'd be in contempt of court and stuck in jail.