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Does Drawing on Experience Infringe on Other's IP?
Daniel Paull asks: "I recently asked one of our developers to draw up a design for a specific component. After a few hours he returns telling me that he'd solved a very similar problem a previous place of employment and that they had developed a "neat" solution. The developer then became concerned that a ground-up re-implementation of these design patterns and principals may infringe on the other companies intellectual property or breach some copyright laws. This developer is talented and experienced - that's why we hired him. The question is, at what point does 'drawing on experience' cross the line and invade others IP?"
I am now, a Sr. Network Engineer. But before doing this, I have been everything from a system admin, to a security engineer, to a coder/developer. For me, drawing up on past experience is a total necessity because in the time I've been doing this, I *HAVE* seen it all.
From recreating scripts to poll routers, to re-writting perl scripts that poll servers, this is all stuff I've seen/wrote/used before. And even in a larger magnitude, setting up policies or procedures for doing things which I implemented elsewhere. If *I* came up with them, why should someone else tell me I can't use them because I came up with them while I was employed by them?
Sorry, that would be infringing on my ability to earn a living.
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IANAL, but if I were, we'd all be in trouble!
Heh.. agreed, to some extent... but I was referring to the method of problem solving, not the line-by-line copying of a module of code... If the engineer had solved the problem previously, then he had a good idea how to engineer the solution to the current problem.
Moderation totals that amuse me for one of my posts: Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Funny=2, Overrated=1, Underrated=1
Experience and IP are two different things. This guy learned from past experience. Now he can apply that to solve a similar problem. If he hacked in and copied the code, that is different.
If you try to open a door differently each time, pretty soon you will be standing on your head trying to turn a knob with your feet.
This guy needs to do the best job he can for the company that hires him. If he refuses because he did something similar at another company, then you might as well just let him go.
T
IANAL (or an expert in anything stated below).
First, this is what patents are for. Either the "neat solution" is:
1. Patented, in which case, you probably can't use it without licencing the patent, or
2. the "neat solution" is trade secret, in which case your probably fine unless
3. your employee has signed a contract which prevents them from divulging this information under these circumstances.
Something which wasn't mentioned is whether or not the employee worked for a competing company. They are likely to care a lot more about specific knowldge the employee took with him. If you're concerned, you probably want to run this past your companies legal representitives.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
If I were going to try to answer this lawyerlessly, I would say you're fine as long as they didn't patent the solution. And if they did patent it, then the engineer in question should probably know about it because he was one of the inventors, right?
Tell the guy to chill. What's the probability that the other company will ever know? I mean, it's not like you're asking questions about it on a widely-read website or anything.
Liberty uber alles.