Slashdot Mirror
Company Ownership of Employee Ideas
Anonymous Coward writes "Alcatel USA Inc. filed a lawsuit, and won, in a bid to claim proprietary rights for a software idea of one of its former employees, Evan Brown. Evan signed a invention disclosure agreement with his former employers but what makes this case unusual is that Evan never wrote anything down with regards to his idea, meaning that Alcatel seems to be claiming rights to an idea in his head. Does this mean your thoughts may belong to your company? Maybe...." This story has been kicking around for a few days but this is the first legal analysis I've seen of it. Watch what you sign!
J adds:
see also
recent TR story
and
our 1999 story.
it wasn't my idea.
If you don't like the terms of a contract then DON'T SIGN IT! I am sure Alcatel included such a clause in the contract that would allow for something like this to happen. THis is no one's falut but the man who is being "exploited."
Funny, this inventor inveted things before joining that company.. so he should have known to ducment his works right?
So ah why not document an inevntion done on your own time as his claim?
this is a concept of the keetle calling something black..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
That said, I think he got screwed. Where's the EFF for this guy? Shouldn't they take up his cause?
Evan has since decided to terminate his employment with Alcatel. But a court has ruled that his head must remain until the patent on it expires.
So, they're trying to say that since he came up with the idea for this software after he had signed the agreement (even though he never worked on it, wrote anything down) that they own the idea?? Well, although this is most likely going to be a serious pain in the ass for this guy, he shouldn't really have a giant problem winning. One of my good freinds is a lawyer and he has said to me before "did you do this? What documentation of that do you have? No documentation? Then it's obvious you really did'nt do anything" and that is (from what I understand after all IANAL) the court's point of view usually too.
They even seem to be legally required to state that such is the case, or at least every contract i've signed has a footnote after the clause describing the state law.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Sounds kind of like the Borg... my thoughts are not mine, but part of the collective...
Anyway, I wonder how they'd enforce this. Torture? Yes, I can see it now...
*Somewhere in a dungeon deep in the bowels of the Earth*
Interragator: Tell us your invention!
Ex-employee: Never!
Interragator: Fool! *cracks one of ex-employee's teeth*
Ex-employee: NOOOOOO! I'll tell you! I'll tell you anything!
Or maybe they'll just resort to a good old-fashioned we'll-sue-your-pants-off threat.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
All your head are belong to us!!
No.. I am Eastern.
At my last three jobs, I have conveniently "forgotten" to submit a signed copy of the document that lets them own everything I create. For years now I've hated the idea that anything I do while employed (even if it's not work related) could be taken away from me.
I write (or should say, wrote) magazine articles as a freelance writer in my spare time. Despite the fact that I always wrote these from home, the current Intelectual Property contracts in Australia would have meant that my employer owned my words - not ideal.
Despite having failed to submit signed copies of these contracts for 3 jobs in a row (over a 4 year period, no less), I've never been hassled over it.
I guess my point is this: don't sign it if you don't agree with it. Sure, you might not get the job, but think of the implications if your "hobby" becomes an overnight hit!
As a side point, imagine how the guys from id would have felt if they had been forced to hand over their revolutionary 3D game engines to their employer at the time, simply because they thought of the ideas while sitting on the toilet at the office.
you can't always be sure that whatever these ideas are in your head were contributed by a cognition of ideas from that company.
Too bad it isn't one. The worst part of this, however, is not that a corp. can necessarily own a man's ideas in his head (albeit that is bad). Quite possibly the worst bit of it is that this sets the precedent for actually upholding these extreme "legal" documents. For years, many didn't mind skipping license agreements (thanks to GNU, Linux, BSD, now we don't have to) in Windows programs. I understand that NDAs and EULAs are different--but the spirit of this decision can easily be carried over, and now the idle threats made by companies can become harsh, legal punishments.
Don't cross him; don't boss him; he's ridin' and hidin' his pain. Don't fight him; don't spite him; just wait till tomo
Why did he even tell anyone that he had tis idea in his head when he worked for them? Why didn't he say the idea came to him in a dream after he left there?
Evan [the subject of the article for those of you who didn't read it] seems to be at fault here. IANAL, but most people know that you read anything before you sign it. A lot of companies throw that "anything you create [whether or not on company time/hardware] while working for Company X belongs to Company X".
From what I've seen/heard from people presented with this clause in their contracts, if you ask, they will take it out without any questions, but that doesn't make it right to put it in there for the poor fools who don't read it and just sign away...
You honestly think the contract he signed said "we own the rights to all inventions and THOUGHTS you may create during your employment here, even if you have created no inventions during your employment and only THOUGHT about creating said invention and actually did so only AFTER leaving the company"...?
I really doubt that occurred.
If he CREATED something, that's one thing. By your logic, any business I created after leaving employment somewhere would actually belong to my former employer. Say, I work for Intel... and I decide to start a coffee shop that specializes in cookies and donuts too... I started dreaming about doing that since about two years into my employment with intel... but now that I've left the company and started my business, all of my products and business belong to them becuase I dreamt/thought/planned it during my employment?
What about industry? Certainly you shouldn't be excepted to adhere to the contract if you work for Advance Micro Devices making motherboards and your invention has to do with a way to improve lipstick - your employer should have NO claim to your invention since it in no way had anything whatsoever to do with your employment or even your employers industry.
Further, what if you wrote a book and published it? Say a mystery novel...
all your thought are belong to us.....
I used to work at Radio Shack, they claim to own pretty much anything that comes out of your brain while you work there AND for one year afterwards according, including but not limited to anything that you make using radio shack parts
As they say, the man who represents himself has a fool for a client.
Unfortunetally, he doesn't have very much legal ground to stand on. If you sign away your rights, it mean you don't have 'em anymore. Tough cookie. While it's not very nice of his employer, they were perfectly within their rights. Trouble is, if he didn't sign the agreement, he never would have been hired.
First of all, if you signed that agreement, everything you do at work is theirs.
If you want to do something on your own time, you have to take precautions. It might not be convenient, but you'll thank yourself when your old company can't come after the business you just started.
1) Keep a detailed journal. In fact, keep two journals, one for the things you do at work and another for the things you do at home. There shouldn't be much common between them.
2) Buy your own equipment and development tools. You can't use their computer, their copy of Visual Studio, their ciruit fab machine, whatever. Anything you make, that you want to be totally yours, must be done on your own dollar. Don't even use their workspace, or their email system, or their internet pipe.
3) Make sure you fully understand the intellectual property agreements, and have a copy of the one you signed. If you break any part of the contract, you don't have a leg to stand on.
I know everyone wants to be friends with their old company, happy memories etc., but this is business. If they think you are taking a chunk out of their dollar, they will come after you. Play it safe, or be sorry.
...
I strongly disagree with this sort "we own your mind" nonsense, but it is common. Every company I've worked for, in several fields, has made me sign the same kind of document.
this is bad karma, and will stifle good ideas, techys will keep silent when working on a project if the idea is good enough, and keep it bottled up inside thier pointy little heads...
The courts rightly recognized that employees should not be able to withhold potentially valuable ideas from their employer, specifically against their employee agreement. Whether the ideas are committed to practice, or written on paper, is irrelevant. He had an idea valuable to his employer, tried to get extra money from it, and when he didn't get an offer good enough, he refused to disclose the idea. What a horrible precedent it would set if Brown had won.
Pinker was absolutely right when he said:
Technology companies are in the business of inventing, and if people are doing it on their own behalf and take it for themselves from the company, the company is not going to stay in business long.
Also vital is this passage:
Lewis believes Brown could have helped his case had he kept an idea log, as inventors do in the patent arena. Establishing that Brown had the idea years before coming to DSC would have contradicted the signed agreement and gone a long way toward establishing Brown's credibility.
Heed his warning. Brown has a tough case to fight, but kudos to him for 'sticking to his guns'. I predict, however, he will lose.
The court also held that, pursuant to the contract, the company owned full legal right, title and interest to what Henderson called Brown's "solution," which he defined as the process and method developed by Brown for converting machine-executable binary code into high-level source code; reverse-engineering the intelligence from existing programs and recoding it into high-level language; and converting certain machine code into C language source.
Excellent! Alcatel won the right to violate the DMCA!
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
According to the article, Brown was fired when the product was still an idea. Since then, he's done development without any support from Alcatel, not on their time, etc. How can they presume that they should own his work? Is all the work I do from now on the property of my former employers?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
One lesson from this is: if you do something "on your own time", don't talk about it to your company; you can always publish it after quitting and nobody can prove anything. Furthermore, in certain special circumstances, if you do need an exception from a company's IP policy, get it in writing before you sign the employment contract.
Why companies get away with forcing these contracts on workers is hard to understand. They hire consultants that do not fall under such restrictions and pay them more to boot. Furthermore, in many states and countries, there are limitations on such claims by employers, but this is in Texas.
This was an "ask slashdot" question just a few weeks ago. I think that your ideas belong to you and no one else, but as soon as you are working on solution xyz with 2 other people, solution xyz belongs to no one but the company because it is a collective solution. Also, if a company gives you time and money to research solution xyz, the company should get the solution not you.
This is capitalism at it's most shocking and base, and not unlike the question whether we own our own genetic material (or the rights to it, as biotech lawsuits have recently put into question )
I have one word for you: Vote!
Now it could also hurt the company too. The when I became afflicted with tendinitis, the WC insurance company tried to avoid responsiblity by claiming it is from my computing at home. Since the company had the same type of inventions agreement, I argued that since they owned all I worked on, then they had liability for all injuries from what I worked on. MSI took possesion of what I worked on at home, then claimed, in the WC hearing, claimed that program they took was not related to my employment which means they took my work by fraud.
The knife cuts both ways.
Fight Spammers!
This is a pretty disgusting trend to start, and I hope for our sake that Alcatel doesn't win out here.
As the article mentions, the ideas first started long before he was employed by Alcatel and merely came to completion while he was employed there. Imho, the fact they were never written down should mean they never belonged to Alcatel regardless of when he conceived them... but the fact that development (and most of it) occurred long before his employment should strengthen that.
If it is found to be Alcatel's IP then it will cause a lot of other issues. What if you sign a similar agreement with a previous company? Develop a concept, never write it down, move over to company b and finish the concept... who owns it?
I hope some common sense prevails here
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
California Labor Code, section 2870 states that no matter what you signed, your employer cannot claim ownership of intellectual property which:
The article seems to brush across a major point of this dispute. Previously, if you had written down an idea on a napkin, flushed it out on toilet paper, or jotted notes in a notebook, the company had the copyright on, and trade secret protection for, the notebook.
The error of the court, and IANAL, is that there is no law defining ownership of ideas, only protection of expressions from copying and the protection of potentially useful or damaging secrets. In defiance of 200 years of patent law, the court claimed the ideas were property of Alcatel, and QED must be turned over.
We have the RIAA to thank for that incorrect interpretation of the wording of the contract. Now he is stealing the company's "Intellectual Property," as if he walked out of his office with a stapler, rather than the arguably correct interpretation.
What he did do, and the option which the courts have overlooked, is violate his contract. If he wrote down his idea, the company would have the copyright on the paper and, quite correctly, the court would award ownership of the medium to the company. But he didn't. He's required by the terms of his contract to disclose something to the company, and he hasn't. He is in breach of contract, not breach of property law.
Maybe it is just the Law.com article which is misframing the judgement as a property issue in order to goad slashdot. We would need to see the judgement directly to know whether the judges decided he should hand over the information in order to fulfill his contractual obligations, or because the ideas in his head weren't his property. Is any lawyer (or law student) present that knows what the difference in punishments would be if this were a property issue as opposed to fulfilling contractual obligations?
-Chris
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
There is more than one kind of contract. He should return the favor!
He should stipulate in his will that when he dies, the part of his brain that contains the idea be cut out and sent to that company with a letter stating "pursuant to court ruling blah blah blah, here is the idea I thought of."
In addition, Brown was ordered to pay Alcatel's legal fees, which exceed $330,000.
Ouch... first he's mind-raped. Then, he's wallet-raped. And if he fails to comply with any part of this court order, he'll be on his way to being ass-raped.
Quit posting you stupid faggot.
What can you realistically say to not sign it. I've signed them in industries I don't care about, but what about when I see one in the IT field???
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
Every afternoon at work, I think about a nice cold beer...
...I don't see my employer jumping at that one! This is a double standard that must be stamped out!
Ladies, form queue here -->
Read this paragraph again:
"In April 1996, Brown sought a release from DSC to pursue his idea. Brown alleges that he asked several managers at DSC whether the company would be interested in helping him develop the idea. According to Brown, DSC and Brown began negotiating an agreement whereby DSC would pay Brown a percentage of savings realized by the company if the idea was successful and a percentage of income from third-party sales, but the company later halted negotiations. Brown says when he refused to reveal his idea, DSC fired him and sued him."
It seems to me, that while still employed he tried to negotiate an agreement with them, for them to pay him for this idea he had (Which he had not stated in his inventions). They started negotiating, and then a lawyer of theirs realized that "Wait, we own this, don't we?" So they asked him to turn it over. I'd say if he was negotiating to sell it, it was damn well concieved already. Only when he then refused to disclose, they fired him (under breach of contract) and sued his sorry butt.
This is not a precedent to them owning ideas in your head. It's a precedent saying, don't try to sell inventions to your employer, who was employing you when you came up with it. (Which really is rather fair).
The courts rightly recognized that employees should not be able to withhold potentially valuable ideas from their employer, specifically against their employee agreement.
Against the agreement, yes. But no employer should be able to require that employees do anything when they are not on company time. Otherwise how is the relationship any different from "master and slave"? Slavery was (at least in the U.S.) outlawed a long time ago . . .
He had an idea valuable to his employer, tried to get extra money from it, and when he didn't get an offer good enough, he refused to disclose the idea.
And just where is the problem in this? Assuming, of course, that Brown really did invent it on his own time, he should have every right to sell it to the highest bidder, or not sell it at all if he wants. The company certainly shouldn't have the right to take something from him that they never paid him to create in the first place.
I had been working for a company lately which was developing application for BCE Emergis.
One day, couple of months after I began there, the boss came to us and asked that we sign an NDA.
Was asked by BCE they said. And if we would not sign it, they would loose the contract.
So we read it, and it was pretty anoying, because it had been writen for BCE's employee, not their contracters.
So we would had clause stating that during the time of our employement, and 6 month after, we could not use the knowledge acquired during the time of the employement and that any developed application was belong to them.
But because we were not BCE's employee but the firm employee, it meant that we could not use this knowledge at all for the time I was there, even if the contract with BCE ended. Real bad for the firm also...
Well, we asked that the company call a lawyer for us with whom we discused and made some change to the NDA.
Nothing bad happened, and the lawyer almost laugh at us for being so "paranoid", but reading stories like this one, I think that it was not paranoia that much after all...
I'd rather be sailing...
My previous employer... hey that crook Dennis Kozlowski from Tycho was on the board... made us all sign non-compete clauses. You cannot WORK for a similar company for six months. I signed it because I was told it was unenforceable in California, where I was located. When the IPO market started to tank, they closed shop two weeks before christmas. I think that I really was still not supposed to work for any competitor... how astonishing really, that there could be a clause like that, saying you cannot work in your field! Pardon?!? How am I going to eat?
Man, I was a little bitter about it but now it's kind of nice to say, "that board member was a crook" and not only is it true but it's all over CNN (well, -was-). Can't call it sour grapes, can you? Two weeks before Christmas is fitting, looking back on it.
Face it, people sign these things as a gamble... that it will be them quitting, not the company folding, that it will be illegal in your state, etc. etc. You gamble because you are thinking about what happens when everything works out, not what happens when it all goes down hill.
-pyrrho
Good one!!
XML causes global warming.
"flushed it out on toilet paper,"
Amusing slip. I assume you meant "fleshed it out"
graspee
What would happen if it turned out that he'd actually stolen the idea from someone else? Think for a moment about what that does to Alcatel's claim.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
If you live in a state that does not recognize your rights, you're left with what's in the contract. Of course, many people aren't confident enough to individually bargain such details of their contract, and many companies have a strict policy of one policy for all employees. What to do in that case? Well, your options are to find another employer or to collectively bargain a contract, or to collectively try to get a law passed to recognize your rights.
How does one collectively bargain a contract or collectively work to get a law passed? Well, you get together with coworkers and other in the same industry and either pressure employers to get them to the bargaining table or you lobby politicians to get a bill. Call me a cynic, but given that your employer and top management has more money than all the employees put together, I wouldn't count on getting a law passed by traditional $lobbying$. Either way, though, what we're talking about is a union. I'd recommend checking out WashTech or the IWW.
What about something you started working on in your free time before you joined the company?
Trabalhos Prontos
Juiz de Fora IRC
I contract for a defense branch. My employer is pretty wormy though. They tried to get me to sign a non disclosure/non compete agreement that was quite draconian. Running it by 4 attorneys they all told me that I would have a bright future as a stock clerk if I signed it. So I didn't. The agreements would have given them rights to practically everything in my head.
I then proceeded to create an application that the defense folks wanted.
So I copyrighted in my name. I give it to the military, my employer gets zip.
are they going to get the idea now that they've won it? Pry it out of his head with a crowbar? The article says the idea is only in his head, does the court expect him to spend his time finishing developing it? If I was him I'd appeal and if I lost again, I'd delete any portion of the code (or at least encrypt it and say I deleted it) and refuse to write the code. Basically say "Well, if it's YOUR idea then YOU code it", then I'd probably move because you can be damned sure I wouldn't be paying those legal fees.
If a company owns the ideas in our head, shouldn't they own the bad ones too? What about postal workers who had the idea to kill their co-workers? Is this idea property of the USPS?
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article
Alcatel management are perpetrating thought crimes against their employees. Their actions demonstrate the undeniable fact that they are evil, no better than the Church when it burned people at the stake 500 years ago in the process of executing other thought crimes. I urge in the strongest fashion that anyone reading this who works at Alcatel immediately quit, or you will burn slowly, like Evan, at the hands of an inquisition no less terrifying than that of history.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
"Shock! Horror! Ginger isn't Segway" -Silicon.com
1 82 938&6004REQEVENT=&REQINT1=55054&REQSTR1=newsno w
0 57, for
On top of Bob Metcalfe's (founder of 3com, inventor of ethernet networking
technology)
comments about "IT" not being Segway... now comes:
Dean Kamen's Segway HT is not the long awaited Ginger/IT invention by
deduction:
http://www.silicon.com/public/door?REQUNIQ=1029
And here are some people commenting on the scoop:
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=5282012
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=5975
Also see http://www.ginger-chat.com/#newsitem1029121561,92
additional info on how this was discovered.
I would like to thank you for pointing this out. Like everybody else on here I was getting ready to make a mess in my pants - but after reading your statement it suddenly dawned on me:
If this idea really had nothing to do with the company's business and couldn't be applied to anything they were doing - why in the heck did this guy try to sell his idea back to them?
I've had discussions along these lines before - but I have to admit my sympathy for the guy disappeared when I realized that he was trying to sell an idea back to a company that he admittedly finalized while working for them. While he may be innocent of any intentional "wrongdoing" he's still guilty of being an idiot.
Personally I still think this story is interesting based on the fact that the court ordered him to pay the companies legal fees. I believe this is practiced in Europe (at least as far as civil court is concerned) and I've long supported its use here. This says to me the court/judge seemed to feel that went beyond a mere misunderstanding into the "gross negligence" category of dispute.
And considering the circumstances in a fair and rational manner - I would have to say I agree with them.
J
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Glad to see this anti-mainframe jerk being put thru the wringer! I know Alcatel are just being pigs, but what they are doing has a good result.
I have worked in four different companies which have required me to sign employee ownership contracts and none of the outside projects I have worked on when employed at these companies have been an issue.
It is very much don't ask don't tell.
G'luck,
Tim Shephard.
http://www.storepages.net - build your business website today.
What does the labour code north of the 49th parallel say?
...And cellphones.
... I would claim that I just had some idea about a new kind of porn site, then I would contact the media to let them know that Alcatel was considering entering the porn business any day...
my turds? I pushed out a good curry-smelling one three months ago and I want it back.
I think they should then be liable for his bad thoughts while at work. I had a great scam I thought of at work, and then implemented in my spare time......but don't sue me, Alcatel should have kept those thoughts out of my head.
If this was a work contract and the "idea" came in an area not related to the nature of the work covered by said contract, how can the company claim ownership?
Example:
Employee X works for firm Z programming in accounting. While employed by Z he completes his thoughts for the greatest FPS game ever. Realizing the possible cash such a thing could bring, but low on capital, he offers his employers a chance to get in on the ground floor. Negatiations start, and not too long after he gets the shaft and shortly is sued.
Question is, does the contract cover non-related issues even if the field is the same? After all the programming work he was contracted for has no relation to FPS game programming.
Or more a more chilling thought. Where would ID software be today if John Carmack and Company were sued by their previous employers for the same thing?
I don't even know why this went to court. If I was this guy, with nothing written down, I would either say, "Sorry, I hit my head on a coffee table and I forgot", or write down a very crappy implementation or a non-sequitir solution.
Okay, first a solution... agree to tell them everything, get a buddy to whack him in the head with a baseball bat, whoops, forgot it all. Then develop independently again. Helps to have a doctor or two you're friends with to diagnose amnesia.
Another thing. This guy developed his idea before his employment at the company A. What happens if he gets another job at company B. Do they then own the rights to his idea that he developed before he worked for company B, and what about Company A? And what if he then quits company B, and develops another new thing, do both companies have claim to it to? Who gets it? Maybe another solution is to get a second job, sign another agreement and quit, after at least 1 pay check of course, otherwise you wouldn't have been employed by them.
Now I'd just like to find a job, period, nevermind the silly agreements. Columbus OH if any of you have room.
Simply don't sign it, and claim you were never asked to sign.
I mean really, use a little common sense.
When the company started making all the noise about demanding he turn over his idea, he should've come up with a slightly plausible but useless plan, wrote it out on paper, and handed it in. How could they prove he held back?
Later on, he could have revealed the original idea, calling it an improvement on his "prior" idea. How could they prove it was what he had in mind?
First off I've never worked for IBM but at the time this discussion was going on I lived in Poughkeepsie and knew a lot of IBMers, so YMMV.
In any case around the time OS/2 was coming out a lot of the guys started writing OS/2 software in their free time who worked in other divisions of the company. They wanted to release it as freeware (for example a powerful text editor with REXX built in scripting sort of like an IBMified EMACS for OS/2, or a toolkit for designing the 3D icons that OS/2 supported). IBM employees were of the opinion that they were under a "we own you brain" contract so any software they wrote, even on their own time, even unrelated to their job was the property of IBM and thus it had to be distributed as freeware only after IBM had approved its distribution as freeware. As a result there was an internal and an external BBS for these freeware OS/2 applications.
IBM never went to court with any of these guys, they were all of the "a deals a deal" opinion, and that the contract did mean that IBM owned any creative work of their's. But there was discussion the OS/2 community when some of these programs leaked as to whether this was piracy or not. These programs had never been copyrighted, their authors had intended to release them as freeware, the copyright holder had not asserted rights among the general community (the employees were waiting for a "go ahead" from IBM, IBM hadn't given a go or a stop signal)....
Is there any chance this could be appealed?
"IANAL, but by accepting to work you are accepting the contract, in fact you are ratifying the contract simply by the act of receiving salary"
You are not only not a lawyer, but it isn't consistent with common sense.
Lets play pretend.
Pretend that a company has several "things" they want you to sign. An NDA, a patents/inventions paper, and an EEOC type document.
Now, first day of work, the HR person does an incomplete job and forgets to put in the patents/inventions paper.
How could you have agreed to something you never saw? By that logic, the company could claim you agreed to fuck donkeys and tape it for company entertainment.
Think your position through. For there to be a contract, one side actually has to see it and sign it.
Also, consider that employment is not a standard business to business contract. The fact he neve signed it doesn't make his employment invalid. At best, they could insist he signs it or he's fired. But if he quits, they couldn't say, "well, we forgot to give him the document, but we really meant it, so he really agreed to it".
Seriously, think what you're saying through a bit more.
Assignment of Inventions and Original Works.
(a) Inventions and Original Works Retained by Me. I have attached hereto as Exhibit A a complete list of all inventions, original works of authorship, developments, improvements, and trade secrets that I have, alone or jointly with others, conceived, developed or reduced to practice before the commencement of my employment with the Company, that I consider to be my property or the property of third parties and that I wish to have excluded from the scope of this Agreement. If disclosure of an item on Exhibit A would cause me to violate any prior confidentiality agreement, I understand that I am not to list such in Exhibit A but am to inform the Company that all items have not been listed for that reason. A space is provided on Exhibit A for such purpose. If no list is attached, I represent that there are no such items.
(b) Inventions and Original Works Assigned to the Company. I agree that I will make prompt written disclosure to the Company of and will assign to the Company without further payment or consideration all my right, title and interest in and to any ideas, inventions, original works of authorship, developments, improvements or trade secrets which I may solely or jointly conceive or reduce to practice, or cause to be conceived or reduced to practice during the period of my employment with the Company. I understand that only ideas, inventions, original works of authorship, developments, improvements and trade secrets which
(i) were not developed or produced using equipment, supplies, facilities or trade secrets that belong to the Company, and
(ii) do not relate to (A) the business of the Company as it is currently conducted or contemplated to be conducted or as it may be conducted during the term of my employment by the Company or (B) actual or contemplated research or development conducted by the Company, and
(iii) were not developed or produced during ordinary business hours
are not covered by my obligations to report and assign under the first sentence of this paragraph (b).
Some observations:
1. If he had the idea before he was hired, he should have listed it. If he did not list it then, he cannot credibly assert that he had it then. "If no list is attached, I represent that there are no such items."
2. The fact that he did not write down the idea, does not work in his favor. The agreement obligates him to disclose ideas in writing to the Company during his employment. ". . . I will make prompt written disclosure to the Company of . . . any ideas. . . which I may . . . conceive . . . during the period of my employment with the Company." This is what he was hired to do.
3. If you want to make sure that it is yours cybermace5 had it right your own time, your own stuff and journals, journals, journals.
4. RTFC. If you do not understand it find someone to explain it to you. If the Company is hiring you for a technical position it is because they want your thoughts and are willing to pay for them. They are entitled to what you do on their time or with their stuff. If that makes you unhappy, you need to find a different way to make a living. Can you say consultant?
probably the most dangerous outcome of this decision is that it could lead to a lot of companies sueing former employees.
if a worker leaves a company, comes up with an idea and then commercializes it, this decision opens the door for the former employer to sue the worker on the grounds that the idea was developed while working for the company. such a lawsuite would force a worker to prove a negative - that an idea was not developed while at the former employer. these types of statements are difficult to prove and the court's decision would have to be based on which side is more believable or who the judge likes better.
the problem could become even worse as employees quit a failing company. such a company, desperate for money, could launch a lot of frivolous lawsuits or sell the right to sue former employees to a law firm. such lawsuits could even be initiated as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. without a clear definition over who owns an idea, employer or employee, this decision could lead to a lot of expensive litigation and cause problems for former employees who decise to become entrepeneurs.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Yeah... Invention clauses cover any invention that at any time, now or at any time in the future, the company might be interested in. So yes... it was definately covered.
As for John Carmack, and his buddies, considering he tried to get his company to publish it, and they said they didn't want it, I doubt it was an issue. Also since he was negotiating with his company, I'm assuming they had some agreement about it.
It's a helpful thing to remember when the company pays for lots of additional days off, doesn't question sick days, and give you equipment to take home to work.
I routinely develop ideas (training materials for example) at home, in my spare time.
Does my company have a right to them? Hell yes, they pay me to perform my job, not on an hourly rate, but on a yearly salary.
Do I like it? Hell No, but I like the pay, so I find it an even trade. Now, material not job specific, that's outta bounds...
Yo Grark
The Sum of all idiots is one genius shy.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I work in the IT section of a transportation firm.
There is no IP or patent agreement.
Not all companies are greedy.
In my case, the insurance company tried to claim that my injury was from computing at home, not from the minimum 8 hours a day at the office. Of course this was just a sleezy insurance company attempt to deny. The insurance company doctor said that the injury was from work.
Workers comp. covers work related injuries. Not just when you are working at the office. Now, if the company wants to claim ownership on work you do outside of the office, then they must accept liability for injuries outside the office related to that outside work.
Fight Spammers!
IEEE has an Intellectual Property Committee that researches and investigates IP laws and agreements and such. They often propose policy to the government (US, specifically).
One of the things they're working on right now is collecting information and opinions on pre-assignment agreements (these are the agreements that you're asked to sign at the start of employment, or a contract, which assign all rights to the company you're working for. I highly suggest that everyone who has a strong view go to http://ieeeusa.org/committees/IPC/ and read the information they have and make comments using the form on that page.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
At first I thought this was a case of Brown mentioning an idea and the company taking the idea and running with it. I seriously don't have too big a problem with that. Everybody has idle musings and ideas, but it's the people who act on them who are rewarded.
But this? It's reminicent of the Borg, pardon the Trek reference all your base truely are belong to us... The fact that this project predates his employment should render such a lawsuit and intellectual claims null and void. Somebody in the courthouse has obviously fallen asleep at the wheel... But it just goes to show you... THE JOB IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. Depsite popular belief, they are not there for your benefit, no matter how much like it. in otherwords, what you do outside of work is your business, not theirs because they really don't want you to succeed past the point where you are no longer dependant on them.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
That is simply another good reason for people to not go over the top and try to do anything special for the company they work for.
I understand the comments you are making, but they seem to imply that he was trying to sell something he had created to solve a problem that his employer faced, in other words he was negotiating his job. I see it a bit differently. It is obvious that his employer never directly tasked him to solve this problem. If he comes up with a solution on his own that has nothing to do with a task or responsibility that his employeer has for him - then it is his idea.
It even mentions that he had the idea before he went to work for them
As an example, lets say that you are a sysadmin who programs on his spare time. You see that the company programmers who use the system(s) that you admin could benefit from an idea that you had previous to becoming an employee for the company. You program this idea on your own, and try to offer it back to your employer as an outside negotiator. You see, you developed the product outside of work and it does not relat to what you were employed to do. As a sysadmin, you have no relation to programmers other than they may write and compile code on a system that you are tasked to only maintain. As far as I am concerned Alcatel decided that they wanted something for nothing. They wanted their employee to give them everything - for nothing in return. As a result of this, to exercise his rights, the employee quit on his own terms, thus severing any contract that was made with his employer.
All in all, he deserves what he got for trying to go against a large company with a pee shooter. Where's Baily when you need him?
Intellectual property rights (in this case, copyright or patent) accrue only under certain circumstances. Here in a nutshell is how it works. Copyright protects creative expressions that are fixed in a tangible medium (so an idea in someone's head doesn't qualify). Patent law protects ideas, but you have to disclose them in a formal filing, and the idea has to be original and useful. An employer could, under the right conditions, own a copyright or patent over something that an employee creates. But in neither case could that happen if the only place the idea existed was in someone's head. I haven't read the article in question so I don't know the facts, but I'll bet there is something more than an idea in an employee's head.
Invent things and don't take credit. That way the employer cannot know the invention is from you.
this is one reason why i will not work for a software company writing software (maybe a sys admin or other something for a while, but not a developer)... when i get my bachelor of science degree, i will get my masters, then my Ph.D, and do research the rest of my life, and my software ideas will be "donated" to the open source/free software movement.
I write code.
I have a feeling
to it. I know I will...
On a perhaps more pragmatic notion,
read your damn contracts
before signing. And, in a nice ironical
twist, change the language on it
(crossing what you don't like out and writing
what you like in) and give it back to
the company. Likely if it is a small
change on page 9 somewhere, they will
not even check (I tried it).
Considered harmful.
I just won't allow companies to suck the life out of me. I give them 1/3 (too frequently 1/2) of my professional time. I'll be damned if they take my personal projects and make me foot the bill.
He told them, on work time, at work. I always figured that if I said something at work "hey what if we put this gizmo with that whatsit" then they would own it. But if I thought of putting the gizmo with the whatsit on my own time, and then sold it on my own, either to somebody else, or actually brought a patented product into work to sell them (and I still think even that would be iffy) that would be different. Hell, if it's just his thoughts, how can he prove that he didn't just think it up at work? He should have kept his mouth shut.
Free Mac Mini
Hey Boss! I found this computer in my cubical. I'll sell it to the company for $500!
It's only a junky Pentium II, I'd only pay $300 for it.
But it recently got a memory and hard drive upgrade. It is worth at least $400.
Hey! That's the computer you are suppost to work on! Give it back!
No! It's mine! I found it! You can't have it, I have been looking for a computer before I came to work here!
You're fired! Give us back the computer, or we'll sue you!
Never! It's mine!
See you in court!
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
. . . would there have been the tech explosion in Silicon Valley?
/mine/, not my employer's. It's up to me to decide whether I want to sell them (which is what I'm doing when I accept a salary for working on ideas); anything else amounts to indentured servitude.
After all, think of the number of startups that formed when someone had a cool idea, left their employer, and started out on their own . . . Companies like Intel, for example.
Personally, I find this kind of thing utterly insane, and really quite disgusting - my thoughts are
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
Refusal to sign a contract does not mean you don't get the job. Actually, many people will respect you if you show that you know what's going on.
My dad had a similar contract put in front of him. He marked up the contract, crossed out sections he didn't want and you know what? They gave him the revised one anyway.
The mores of today's industry are akin to HIV. Little more than an opportunistic infection in the body of socity. Enron/Worldcom aren't unique, they are nothing more than examples.
You have to understand the new rules...
1) NEVER contribute to your employer beyond, exactly, what you need to keep your job.
2) REALIZE that promotion and pay are based on your ability to lie and steal, NOT on the ideas you contribute.
3) KNOW that your employer is the LEAST trustworthy entity you will have dealings with. Yet, it is also the one that can do you the most harm (short of the criminal justice system).
You have not choice but to work. You have no choice but to succum to their rules. Use active resitance, like not tuning in documents, if you can get away with it. Passive resistance is always possible, just keep your mouth shut and DO THE MINIMUM YOUR JOB REQUIRES.
Sad. I know. But until people start tearing down the place -- nothing will change. The US system is based on providing means for "peaceful revolution". No guns, perhaps, but revolution is never a tidy process.
I've made it clear to my employer that, if
they want me to think on the job, that costs
extra.
Does anyone know what the law says about this in Oregon?
1. Printout hexcode onto paper.
2. Cover with choclate.
3. Eat Paper and hexcode with it.
4. Deficate and collect in paper bags.
5. Set on Fire on steps of Alcatel.
6. Knock or Ring Door Bell.
I am sure whoever answers will be able to translate the code.
Seriously though if it is just an idea, that has not been put on paper and not tested. Then how much is it really worth? I've worked a lot of problems in my head before but once you start developing the idea, you have to fill in a lot of details. So I suppose he has to work for free now to develop the idea. He told them the idea. What sort of solution or how detailed does he have to give them to be in compliance? I can't imagine the courts want to decide that issue. It would seem to me he could tell them anything for the solution and be in compliance with the court. Of course he is stuck with the legal fees. This seems to suck big time!
This guy waa/is real stupid.
In the mid 1980's I signed a contract like this (Texas Instruments). The contract actually specified that they owned everything. I was really annoyed by thisa in retrospective. The next position I had I was presented with pretty much the same TURD of a contract. As I recall, it s purpose was to assure the "Free Exchange of Ideas amongst employees..." and that it covered me 24 hours per day. I pointed out to them that I wasn't paid for 24 hours each day, they (management replied) that they wouldn't "really" enforce the agreement (whatever this meant). I replied that I'd be happy to sign any agreement like this that allowed for the free exchange of ideas, but that they should be prepared to exchange all references to me with the company and all references to the company with references to me, oh and that I wouldn't "really enforce the agreement.
They asked what areas I already had "ideas" in, and that they could exclude those. I told them they couild supply me with a list of areas that they were interested in...
I also told them that I would start keeping a log of "ideas" and if they wanted "ownership" they would have to pay me for my "thinking time" whether in the office or not, oh and that alot of stuff comes to me in dreams...
They said, "You know, we really don't need an agreement like this with you..."
ANd I continued to work ther and FREELY contributed ideas which were of use to the company
when my employee comes up with a bright (or not so bright) invention, I will fire him, sue him and get the invention for free. Of course, I won't allow employ anyone who wants to modify the employment contract.
Be sure you write down EVERYTHING you think of and email to your boss.
Then they can't claim you witheld ideas
Makes ya want to live off welfare, eh? ...no, wait, the government will probably out such a statement in your agreement too.
Now how should I think so I don't get in trouble...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'd tell them that my idea was an extension to a GPL'd product and hence, under the GPL. That way if they want the idea they'll have to GPL all of their code. I think they'd back off after that considering their obvious fears over controlling IP.
This sets a nice stage to provide a court test on the patentability of software at an appellate court level. If software is not patentable, then the agreement is not applicable to software.
He deserved to lose because he asked permission the way he did, and because he dissolved the relationship with his lawyer.
But that leaves several avenues for appeal, and one of them is to question the patentability of software in the first place.
-- Terry
.....that makes security products?
See: Who owns what's in your head? for a thorough overview of the topic. The short answer is that, yes, what Alcatel is claiming is really not that far out. The precedent has been established years ago.
A few years ago, the dot-com I was working for sold its B2C component to another dot-com. Both of them were involved in selling insurance online. The first has transformed itself into an ASP, the second is gone -- it literally no longer exists.
In the first few days after the transfer, we were presented with a contract to sign that would assign all rights to anything we created to our employer. My boss mentioned that they'd want to talk to me about my font site, and I f--king lost it. (He was a cool guy and could deal with me venting.) Given that many of us on the web dev team were pursuing our own things on the side, I decided to put a stick in the hornets' nest and stir.
A good number of us, when informed that they were serious about their "ownership" of our ideas/creations, decided to present a united front and get them to change the wording so that it clearly specified that they could only claim ownership on ideas as the pertain to the business of selling health insurance online.
Surprisingly enough, they did it with no complaint. What I've discovered since then is that companies are willing to flex on this. Really...what is an insurance dot-com going to do with my fonts? Or with the novel I just wrote? They don't...the blanket statement is just there so that they can capitalize on people stupid enough to sign away their rights...they'll adapt it so that it merely protects their business.
blog |
I work at Alcatel in Plano, and most people here agree that while Evan is a nice guy, he pretty much slit his own throat from day one.
:-)
This is really not as simple as "Alcatel (DSC, really) owning soandso's idea", although it makes great headlines.
What happened was:
1. He signed an agreement (which most of us do not have to, BTW) giving DSC rights to anything he invented - gee whiz, Cisco, Sun, Nortel, Oracle - pretty much eveyone does this with the few choosen employees who get to sit around and dream up these things.
2. He made the big mistake of telling his supervisors about this great idea of his when there was no written documentation (duh.)
3. DSC offered to give him a big $$$ check for his idea, but, he decided to "fight the man" (read: gamble) for his idea and he lost.
4. Even Evan himself admits that he could have excluded this idea (that he has always said he starting working on in 1975) from the legal agreement (doh!). Maybe he would have stood a better chance in court if he had some prior documentation or at least a mention of it.
Whats the real lesson here? Common sense always applies. If you've got a million dollar idea - dont sign an intellectual prop agreement! Or how about, Dont listen to lawyers who want you to go to court so they can get rich from you (my personal favorite).
I truly like Evan Brown, and i hate to see him get slammed by our legal guys (i've watched this case since 1999), but for the most part we all believe he just made bad decisions as opposed to being victimized.
BTW, we have running joke at Alcatel that our legal department is a profit center - we've sued many more people and corps...
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
Again, the courts violated my rights to due process. I appeared in court last Friday to hear DSC's motions for Summary Judgement. While sitting in the court room, I learned that a judge had been assigned to hear my Motion to Recuse. The book of rules (Texas Rules of Civil Procedure) require notice to be given to the parties before the Motion to Recuse can be heard (TRCP Rule 18a(d)). I was never notified that a judge had been assigned or that a date had been set for the hearing. I informed Judge Marvin Marshall that I had not been notified as required and that I was not prepared to present my Motion to Recuse. Judge Marshall told me that my motion was going to be heard whether I was ready or not.
After the hearing on my Motion to Recuse, Judge Marshall signed an order DENYING my motion and he then notified Judge Henderson that Henderson could hear DSC's motions for Summary Judgement. About an hour after hearing DSC's motions, Judge Henderson issued a MEMORANDUM in which he granted both of DSC's motions for Summary Judgement. DSC's first motion for Summary Judgement attacked all my Counterclaims and DSC's second motion for Summary Judgement was for attorney fees in the amount of $332,000.
Judge Henderson directed counsel to prepare a draft of final judgement that incorporates all necessary rulings and findings of the Court and submit it in electronic form to the court administrator.
Judge Henderson has tried this case by depositions and affidavits where he has personally ruled on the evidence and denied my right to trial by jury.
I've been railroaded!
I don't know how much money DSC has contributed to Judge Henderson's re-election campaign, but I believe they got their moneys worth. I truly believe that justice is for sale in Texas and our Civil Rights aren't worth the paper they are printed on.
I have filed a Motion for New Trial and am working on my appeal.
- Evan Brown
obvisouly we aren't privvy to all the details surrounding the case; but I can only assume he discussed reasonably high-level concepts with his colleagues.
so, lets say, i go to my bosses and say i'm resigning because i've come up with a really good idea to make money from software (in this fairy tale, assume my idea is unrelated to our core business). i tell them the high-level angel on it, but retain the details. now that a precident has been set, they say "hahaha, sorry pal; all your ideas are belong to us". and they sue me. um, ok, so i just go, "oh right well my idea is based on the precognescent polarity of perpetual motion and you just go click click click and it all happens."
my point is, if the details haven't been revealed to anyone else, do they have the right to supena my brain? and how will they ever know that my disclosures were exactly the way it should be?
But that leaves several avenues for appeal, and one of them is to question the patentability of software in the first place.
Oh, come on.
There are stronger cases to use to fight software patents.
Nobody fighting software patents is going to want this case becoming part of their crusade.
What this says is that if Einstein had this idea floating around in his head for decades, and then got a job with a company (in this modern world), and mentioned his pet theory to someone at work and they were interested, he could get HIS idea sued out of him and patented by the company, and they can proceed to patent and use his idea (and make him pay for it!) while they leave their competition in the dust, and leave the rest of their field in The Dark Ages.
Don't we have any laws to protect THE RESEARCHER who actually comes up with his own ideas anymore? You know, like it says in that Constitution document that everyone ignores? And for that matter, what about enriching the scientific community instead of the corporations? Did we all just forget about that in our mad dash to acquire the Holy and All-Powerful Dollar?
Anyone who could perform or support an act like this has no sense of ethics in the first place, which includes at least one major corporation, a bunch of lawyers, and a judge; I'm not surprised at all. So call the thought police on me already, I'm guilty.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
When are you libertarian slashdotteri going to figure out the biggest threat to your freedom is not the government, but corporations?
>this is a concept of the keetle calling something black.
How do you figure that?
recompile.org
I interviewed with a technology development company and was asked to sign one of these forms right there at the interview. It was made clear to me that if I didn't sign it right then and there, the interview could not continue. Most of it involved non-disclosure. But some of it did sign over all my invention rights to them.
There was one clause that specified that if I was not hired, then the contract only applied to information made available to me during the interview. It was not entirely clear how well that applied to the parts about me handing over all my rights to my own intellectual property.
The really stupid part of this wasn't that they wanted me to sign such a contract, but that they barely gave me enough time to read the whole thing (I actually did). Due to it being in the circumstance of an interview, it wasn't possible to go consult an attorney, much less find one that practiced in both employment law and intellectual property law (we're probably talking a week or two at least). When I asked the HR guy about it, he indicated they had interviewed 3 other candidates for the position and were looking to make the hiring decision within the week, and that such a delay would probably mean the position would no longer be open.
What made me decide to walk out wasn't so much the fact that the situation existed (though I might well have because of it), but rather, the fact that the HR guy was so perfectly prepared in his answer to me. Whether he was telling me the truth or not wasn't even relevant. Later, I found the same job was posted again. Who knows how many walkouts they had.
Later, a recruiter was trying to get me in to interview for a position at an entirely different company. On Monday he was saying they had people from their New York headquarters in for the week to do the interviewing and they were booked up very tight. By Wednesday, he had an appointment for me for a Friday interview. Then the surprise. He wanted to send me the non-disclosure and non-compete contract. His explanation was because the schedule was so tight, they wanted people to be coming in with the contract already signed. At first we had an issue with the fact that he was sending it to me in Microsoft Word format (whee, I get to see all the revisions they ever made to it). I pointed out to him that I was a Unix person, this was a Unix job, and he was a recruiter doing more than half his work with Unix positions, and he wanted me to run Microsoft crap? So I ended up having him pull up a copy and asked him about some clauses in it (he was patient enough to do this, surprisingly). I focused on the non-compete and asked him if there were any clauses that made it only apply if I got the job. There were none. So I explained to the recruiter that "If I interview there having signed this, find out what this secret area of business is that they are doing, them I'm no longer allowed to work for anyone else in the same line of business, or even related, even if I don't get this job?" He paused for a minute and then said "I guess not". now I wished I had gone ahead and let him send me a copy of that.
The immoral of the stories here are that companies will try to take advantage of you one way or another. And it's probably even worse during this current economic downturn (equivalent to a full blown depression if you look just at the high-tech businesses by themselves). Watch out for what you sign.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What depresses me most about this is the unbelievable smugness of attorney Eric Pinker of Somebody, Somebody and Pinker, with lines like, "This isn't complicated at all." Of course it isn't, Eric. Somebody hires you and your friends to beat the shit out of some poor sucker and you do it. Simple. Nobody has any rights whatsoeover except you, your colleagues, and the assholes who have enough money to hire you. The ideals you may have had when you were younger don't mean shit. Ethics don't mean shit, and most of all, other people don't mean shit. Only you and money mean a damn thing, and I sure feel privileged to be an insignificant part of your world.
Probably the best defense against this is to be employed in California. Lots of tech companies here have invention clauses in their employment agreements, and most of them don't have any exclusions, but all of them come with a copy of California's law on the subject. That law limits the scope of any such invention clause to two things:
- Things invented, regardless of subject matter, during your period of employment while actually at work.
- Things invented, whether actually at work or not, which fall into the category of things your employer is currently doing or is planning on doing in the future.
The law's clear on a bunch of points. Salaried employees ARE NOT always at work. Companies don't get to redefine "what they do" in twisted ways to cover anything under the sun. The contract may not legally contain terms which contradict the law. The contract may not be applied to things invented before you were employed there (provided you list them so the employer knows what they are) nor after your employment ended (although if the idea is in the same area as your work and within a reasonable time after the end of your employment the employer can argue that you actually came up with it before you left and didn't say anything and the burden will be on your to refute that).The conditions aren't perfect, but they're reasonable enough that most people can live with them. .ca.us may be crazy, but sometimes they're crazy in good ways.
"There are stronger cases to use to fight software patents."
Which will never get their day in an appellate level court, where they have the danger of becoming case law against software patents.
Any time this issue ever gets raised, it ends up getting settled out of court to prevent it becoming a legal precedent.
-- Terry
that is exactly what happened here. By refusing the tell them the idea, he violated his agreement that required him to disclose it. The company had full right to terminate and file suit. Though, that may not necessarily have been the best thing for them to do. Had they informed him of the agreement and given him opportunity to reveal before firing him, this case would have a lot more meat on it in favor of DSC/Acatel.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
>|<*:=
I spent so much brain-power trying to defend myself I seem to have completely forgotten what the hell it was trying to defend. Ah, darn.
I want to join your brigade of terror, please involve me in your plans.
I know this doesn't get him out of the court fees, but why couldn't he just write down some gibberish and give that to them, since they have no idea how his idea works, or if it works at all.
gigo.
... so, you're using their services, paying them for an education. and during that time ... inventions of yours become theirs? yes, i'd like to walk into my local fast-food chain, order a meal, and be told that if i come up with any ideas and scribble them down on -their- napkins while sitting at -their- tables (and especially if the energy to do so comes from -their- food) then my ideas are theirs ... wonderful.
... of course, we're still not sure how to split up the ownership between team members =)
btw, at my university, we discussed at length the status of our code written during senior projects -- most of the projects were for university-related functions, such as support for prof's, the dorms, some of the departments (especially websites) etc. and we were told that, as far as the prof's knew, there was absolutely nothing transferring ownership of such code to the university
Brown, representing himself pro se, alleged in a response to the company's motion for summary judgment...
That's it. Forget all the discussion here, the reason he lost everything is because he didn't hire a lawyer.
If you think you're smart / knowledgable / wise enough to represent yourself, that is absolute proof you're not. Even lawyers hire lawyers.
I'm not saying he could have avoided all losses, but a lawyer can reduce your losses.
Useless advice in this economy. Unless you are independently wealthy or in a niche field, you will either sign what you're asked to sign or enjoy living in a cardboard box. A piece of more realistic advice: NEVER mention ANY new idea to ANYONE at your job. You aren't being paid enough to give it to them, and you won't be afterward. Either exploit it yourself entirely on your own time or release it (anonymously, if necessary) to the public.
Just FYI: in some states, not only are these agreements not legally binding, it's actually _illegal_ for an employer to attempt to make you sign one.
C//
Corporate america owns everything, with ownership comes control, control is the opposite of liberty...if you can capitilize on IP, then they own you... Bad system if you ask me.
The best advice anyone ever gave me about moonlighting while fully employed was, essentially, "don't ask and don't tell". This falls into the same category. By revealing his idea after a lengthy term of employment with no supporting materials to establish a timeline, he pretty much guaranteed his own demise.
If he'd quit and then developed the idea, he might have had a chance.
That employee agreement was pretty atrocious. Microsoft has a fairly similar one. Any ideas you come up with while at Microsoft, or put into practice within SIX MONTHS after leaving, are owned by the company.
We did get MSFT to change some of the wording, I think partly because California law is pretty specific about the legal status of stuff you do on your own time and equipment so long as it doesn't relate to the business of your employer. I feel bad for the guys in Washington -- they have to fight over non-compete clauses, which is quite a thing to struggle against when you're trying not to compete with Microsoft.
One minor quibble about the guy's claims: the company did NOT offer to pay him $2 million. They offered to provide a small percentage of the savings, capped at two million. There's no telling whether this idea would amount to anything.
. . . would there have been the tech explosion in Silicon Valley?
When i was out at a dot-com one of the guys there said that one of the big reasons that Cali had so much tech stuff so quick is the lack of non-compete agreements. I forgot if they were illegal, or just de-facto unenforcible, but it allowed a person to have a startup in very quick time. If you had a better idea, you could find skilled people in your industry very easily, and you can get started without a great deal of training. Dunno if this is true, but an interesting explanation.
If folks are encumbered by "ideas" that others own, this freedom of movement is obviously curtailed. I wonder if the state of Cali is looking into this, and their position on this. I doubt much, right now the "chilling effect" of owned intellectual property is fairly low on the economic influences in Cali.
Why do people keep thinking that the truth will set them free? The fact is, a smart person -- even if they are entirely in the right, ethically, morally, and probably legally -- will likely get fscked over by the legal system if they represent themself.
Yeah, it would be great if life were like movies, where you could simply plead your case, making sense, convincing a judge/jury that you are right. Unfortunately, lawyers are highly paid for a reason. THEY KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. Lawyers go through specialized training, they pass tests, they have other lawyers to confer with, they understand the rules of the game.
My god, even lawyers usually know enough to not try to defend themselves (something about having a fool for a client).
So, typically what we see is a guy defending himself and then getting outraged that he got screwed by the judge because he missed a deadline, or didn't file a brief correctly.
This guy may lose the money he'd make from the invention, $300,000 for the company's legal fees, his house, etc... Yet in his "What's new" page on his web site he states Again, the courts violated my rights to due process. Come on, you almost never hear people who've been defended by good lawyers claim that their due process rights have been repeatedly violated.
Maybe he should have contacted the EFF. No matter what, he should have gotten a snake^H^H^H^H^H lawyer to defend him.
Oh, and I hate people who write their web sites in the third person...
This is really to tasteless even to be considered. None should be able to claim somebody elses thought. It makes me wonder where the hell the USA is going to wind up. The founders of the former great country must be spinning like fans in their graves.
HTTP/1.1 400
If the company wants to claim ownership of all his thoughts while he worked there, then they probably owe him some horrendous overtime.
Let's see... the brain is always thinking, even when asleep. So, that's a total of 168 hours per week. Since OT is usually time and a half of every hour past forty, he should have gotten paid for 232 hours each week that he worked there.
Somehow, I think he was underpaid a bit.
This is one of the worst problems in our legal system. The system allows ownership of ideas. Guess what? Everything is an idea. Every physical object exists not only as the object but the idea of the object.
Let's say I come up with a beautiful new object. It is called foobar. I package foobar in a black box that allows only one person to look at it at a time and I put a liscense agreement on the box that states that anyone who opens the box agrees to the liscense and may not remove the object from the box and may not discuss the object with other people, may not sell foobar or its container. In fact, foobar still belongs to me but you may look at it until I say that your time is up. You also agree that you may not make likenesses of or references to foobar. Your liscense to look at foobar is non-transerable. You may not destroy foobar.
What if foobar wasn't just something nice to look at. What if it was a new powerful language that I discovered that could make human communication 10 times faster, more precise, less ambiguous, and was easier to learn than any other previous language. What if foobar was a method for generating an anti-gravity field requiring very little power or what if foobar was machine that cost less than $10 to construct and could produce enough food and clean water for a person to live on for a year with the addition of a 9V battery and some dirt?
What if everything was foobar'd? So that every time someone or the company that they worked for cme up with an idea or a product it was placed in one of these black, liscense-laden boxes? How long would it take before the open exchange of ideas, the systems of commerece and research into all things new and innovative would be frozen by a morass of black tape?
Imagine a clerk coming up with a way to shave 10% of off a companys expenses yearly. Shouldnt that guy have compensatione for that? Its not like he gets any money for it on his montly paycheck.
This kind of behavior is just self damaging to the company. They should encourage their employees to think more and give them bonuses when ther ideas are working.
The message they are sending out is shut your mouth, dont think about thinking!
HTTP/1.1 400
Microsoft... Adobe... Now Alcatel. Well, it's their loss.
If HP had persued that DMCA case, they would have been on the list as well.
yeah, i think it probably says something very similar to that. I was offered a job by a company with HQ in Texas, and as part of the package along with health and medical and drug test (don't even get me started on THAT) info, is the standard IP and confidentiality agreemnet. It reads, in part:
Obviously I can't sign that. But that doesn't change the fact that several people have asked me to do so, with a straight face even. I live in CA, so "the maximum extent permitted by law" is apparently less than what passes for employment in Texas. One more reason we should bulldoze the state and give it back to the Mexicans.
So what did I do? I said, "This isn't enforcable in CA." They said, "You're right." I said, "So, how about we just strike it out?" They said, "Uhhh..." but they watched me do it, and I signed and dated the change, and they signed and dated it too, and that was that.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
This all arose because he tried to get his company interested. If he'd quit as soon as he was ready to put his product on the market, in three months everyone at his former employer would have forgotten about him. Instead he rubbed their noses in it by trying to negotiate.
And then represented himself in court. Oops.
Be afraid when your company owns your brain ...
The scary part is he was under court order to drive 160 miles to and from work everyday to work for 8 hours a day without pay
to finish a program that he may not even eventually own and told he must finish it and show Alcatel how it works.
He worked for 12 years on this program before coming to Alcatel.
His big mistake was trusting those vultures and telling them about it. He should have waited until he wasn't working for them anymore, then developed it.
Alcatel is suing everyone: Intel, Cisco, this guy.
They've found a new way to make money.... litigation.
Alcatel: Where we litigate, not innovate.
More info: here, here,and here.
Good thing he didn't have any children. oh wait... I just hope he didn't even THINK of having children.
An easy way around these policies : Keep whatever hoby you have a secret. Only release anonymously, and release only as public domain. Not GPL, but public domain.
This way, even if they discover who is behind the software, they can only fire you for using your thoughts for something other than the company business (silly, because it is obvious you did it at home without any intention to profit from it, or to use it to help the competing GNU software), and will most likely not sue you (a waste of time and money) - they, as well as anyone else, can grab the public domain code you released, and include it in their software. And all that - only if they find out what you're doing at home - and there is no way they can do that if you are careful enough.
And yes, you can still include your hoby ideas in your worktime projects : simply state you found some interesting public domain libs on the net while surfing at home. You may even get a promotion for the great stuff.
I think Evan is now bankrupt. There's information from him as well as links to other articles about the case on his website.
When Alcatel tried to force the idea from him without a license, he could have merely presented an idea that was completely impractical.
For instance, "Decompiling the binaries is easy: we'll just zap them with a massive negative-entropy ray!"
Since he's never written anything down, there's no way to prove that this isn't his wonderful solution to whatever the final 20% of the problem was.
And why would Alcatel even waste their time suing to get something that could turn out to be total bullshit?
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
DMCA makes it a crime to make available darn near anything that could be used to theoretically used to avoid copy protection.
Sec. 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems ..
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof
It is so vaguely worded that litigators are citing the DMCA against anything and everything and stretching it to absurd lengths. (Think of the Felton SMDI paper.)
While you and I don't think of a reverse compiler as a hacking tool, try explaining that to layman.
for overtime or any of his expenses developing it. There was no contract nor request for this from a manager at work, so, this is not related to his job in any way. How would you like it if you were sued by a company you worked for 10 years ago for your increased productivity because of experience? Experience is part of the pay and is in no way are you obligated for your use of it. Basically, I don't see how a contract for employment, that was terminated by the employer, is enforcable by the employer in a court. Also, I think his line of reasoning that if it's not patentable, then it's not IP to begin with is very valid even in accordance to the contract. If companies want to ensure that employees don't skip town with their ideas, they should do one of the following: A) for inventors (R&D), they should ask frequently for their ideas that they are working on for their work and have them documented. If they don't come up with anything, then they aren't doing their job, and fire them. B) for developers, they should have slips for every project that the developers must sign before they can work on projects so they have documentation of what the company owns. Any ideas not covered by A or B are not part of what the company pays for, and are therefore not the companies. The burden of proof MUST lie on the company because the developer or the inventor has no way of proving that he didn't come up with the idea on company time, but the company could if in fact it was true and they took care to document what IP is theirs.
Karma Clown
Is it your thoughts what makes you who you are? And if so, someone owns your thoughts...
just to sound corny and out of date...
All your thoughts are belong to US
Texas invokes Laws allowing Employee Interrogation.
Pixels keep you awake!
America may have freedom of speech but it doesn't seem like it has freedom of thought.
Oh, you mean in the US then yes, paid judges can decide whichever way they want nowadays so who cares about contracts, it's all about money!
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
One huge motherload of a law, in the US and EU, that states that whatever I do on my spare time, is my own business.
Maybe it is time for the companies to treat their employees better so that any ideas that they might have get appriciated properly and they get their just award. I wouldn't go through the trouble of setting up a company of my own if I could make very good money from staying where I am and help my company with good ideas.
This is what a goverment should do, protect the little people. The goverment works for the people. But this is unfortunatly long forgotten...
"Establishing that Brown had the idea years before coming to DSC would have contradicted the signed agreement and gone a long way toward establishing Brown's credibility."
I am not familiar with Texas laws (other than the one about being allowed to blast anyone off your porch with your shotgun), but this is the crux of the matter, is it not? If he invented this thing before he joined Alcatel, the invention is his. If he came up with it after signing the agreement, it belongs to the company. Now it seems to me that it is not at all clear (as in proven) when this invention was made. For a judge to give a firm ruling on this, one way or the other, without any proof on this crucial point, is rather slipshod justice.
My question is: on whom lies the burden to provide proof about when the invention was made? The burden of proof lies on the claimant usually, and that would be Alcatel.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Companies will try to take advantage of you and it's up to you to make sure they don't.
However, I think lawyers who dream up shit like this should still be victims of their own contracts one day. That would be fun, watching a fat arse lawyer slowly lose everything he has because he thought of it first.
But this case lies in a gray area, he notes, because until the idea is reduced to practice, it's not an invention and you can't patent it.
This simply isn't the law, at least not here in the United States. Many inventions have been patented without being reduced to practice.
What I'm curious about is how this guy's reverse engineering idea was useful or worth the $330,000 law suit of the parent company?
:)
This sounds like a way of trying to extort a guy who comes up with an idea to implement and give away that idea. The idea being in his head is of no value if he doesn't implement it.
I have many ideas, and I signed away my rights to my employer (MS). If I were to go and act upon them and develop something, I would first send mail to the legal team and ask for advice. I would probably have to sign some more paperwork, depending upon what legal says, but I would do it through the legal channel, and make an agreement BEFORE any implementation / exploration of my idea.
I am relatively certain that what happened here is a rather extreme case of "we pay you to think and we own what you should have produced for us under this contract" combined with the "he should have consulted the legal team or an outside lawyer" and the "he brought up that he was developing something to people who cared too much".
I still want to know what the hell this guy thought was such a great idea in reverse engineering assembly to C. Especially considering that an average developer in my team is capable of writing a program which could do that in their spare time... it would probably take on the order of 3 weekends to do.
I wrote a Java bytecode->Java reverse compiler for fun/to learn the assembly language.
Ah well, that's a ramble from an Anonymous Coward who probably won't get read, because noone respects people who fear to put their "real" identity up for the world to see, or people here just hate MS employees.
Article 17:
... seek, receive and impart information and IDEAS through any media and regardless of frontiers.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 19:
Everyone has the right to
I recently left my previous company (money, respect & unreasonable hours), but in my last few days there the senior partner made sure that he had a number of vague discussions with me regarding anything they, or I, might do in the future. According to the agreement I signed when I joined the company, (I was too naive to know better / needed the job) these ideas now belong to them. I cannot use them, or profit from them. Hah!
Of course life is never simple. My current company now contracts IT sevices to my old company. All they asked was that I sign another NDA, which says (and I quote):
"1. For the purposes of this letter "Confidential Information" shall include all information, business methods, data, material, discoveries, ideas (whether or not patentable or reduced to practice), concepts, designs, drawings, specifications, techniques, models, research, processes, procedures, know-how, software, documentation, prototypes, databases, data structures, marketing and development plans, customer names and other information related to XXX's customers, price lists, pricing policies and financial information of whatever nature relating to the Products which is obtained either in writing, or orally, in machine readable form, or in any other manner or form by you from or as a result of discussions with any partner in or employee adviser or agent of XXX..."
Yeah! That's your standard NDA.
It futhermore goes on to say that I agree not to discuss any company documentation (including the NDA) with anyone. Is it just me, or does this seem to go against the spirit, and indeed the letter, of the aforementioned Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Oh, I should add that these are unassailable rights i.e. it is not within my power to sign them away...
I don't know what the answer is to this problem, or even exactly what the question is, but I do find it very very worrying...
It is exactly that simple. The reason employers can take such gratuitous advantage of their employees in certain places, notably several US states, is precisely that people are dumb enough to accept conditions like this. If all the good people in the industry turned around one day and told their potential employers to take a running jump, the employers with reasonable and fair conditions would get all the good people, and the scum would get the fate they deserve shortly afterwards. Trade unions have relied upon this principle for a very long time; it's a shame that there isn't really a major trade union for IT workers (yet).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Of course the company owns the intellectual property of the employee. Damn near *EVERY* company out there does that in some way, shape, or form.
If you take a moment to actually talk to the legal folks where you work, you would understand a lot more about this. I work for a major fortune 500 company. I have something I want to patent. I went to our patent lawyers, asked them to give me a letter saying they give up rights to it. They of course wanted to know what it was, was it related to what we do, did you work on this while you were at work, etc...
AFter I told them truthfully, they were more than happy to give me the letter and I am now free to patent my invention on my own. For any successive patents, I will need more letters. I understand this.
This is all about communication. If you don't take the time to investigate something and take care of tying up your loose ends, you pretty much deserve to get screwed.
The company then proceeds to sue the employee and tries to prevent him/her from making a living at something they did before joining the startup. Not only did the founders lack any experience, expertise or prior knowledge on the topic of their new business plan, they fired the employee and lost all their chances of getting a paying customer.
No, he should be forced to give up his ideas in his head!
"Uhhmmmm, here's my idea. It's a process for getting source code from machine language. First, you need a big stack of plutoninum. This is used to power the time machine. You need to make direct psychic contact with the source code's origininal programmer or his or her parents (due to the psychic link between the generations). You set the time on the time machine to Mayan Real Time..."
"...and then the genetically modified, flying monkeys emerge from the time machine with the source code!"
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Shrink-wrapped paycheck licensing...
By opening this pay check, you agree that all of your thoughts belong to us.
And people are amazed that he lost.
If YANAL.... hire one! It just may save your idea.
What a bloody fool.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
> The courts rightly recognized that employees should not be able to withhold potentially valuable ideas from their employer
If that's the case, then how do we EVER get any competition? Tons of companies have been started by former employees of a similar company who have ideas on how to do it BETTER, or on how to do something else entirely. If the old company can claim all title and interest in what former employees do, there is no incentive to be an entrepreneur and start new businesses.
E.g. you quit your day job at an AOL help desk to start a game company. AOL comes back and says, "We own that. We're calling it Dark AOL of EverGalaxies, but to be nice, we'll let you work the help desk for your own game for your old salary."
Also, think about what you are saying. "Witholding ideas" -- if you're not entitled to control your own thoughts, then this is legalized THOUGHT CONTROL by a third party!
Consider the individual's rights. What if you come up with a great idea on their first day at the job, tell the company, get fired, and the company makes millions off of it?
The key is reciprocity. You're heavily favoring the collective by saying it should be able to exploit the individual endlessly. If you're bound to turn over your brain, you better be guaranteed a cut of whatever money they make off of it!
That's what's so distasteful about the notion of "intellectual property" anyway. Ideas can be passed from one person to another, so they each have their own "copy" of it, without the first person losing anything in the process. These employment agreements want to exploit that by using "at will" work agreements to boot you as soon as they milk the good stuff from your head, with no further obligation to you on their part. "Intellectual property" laws let them say that THEY now "own" that thought, and you aren't allowed to express it.
If I have not missunderstood, things work like this:
/zugedneb
you get an employment, and do your work...
you come up with something... and that something will belong to your company.
THEY will (potentially) sell that something and make good money on it for some time to come...
YOU on the other hand may be without job the next day...
This should be interpreted as "even if your idea has a future you do not. Take this shitty salary, give us everything you do and know... and just do not worry about your future... We own it"
The story about this guy and his idea is a consequence of a problem, not the problem itself.
The problem itself is, IMHO, that about the definition of "distributed" ownership - that many benefit from the work of many, not some benefit on the work of many...
Whatever the definition is, it seems that the phenomena does not exist...
As long as humanity has existed, the main ambition was to live on others bread... to benefit on others work... and to rape their wifes and daughters...
We are all slavs and whores, selling our time, body and ideas cheap...
It is amazing to me that people are shocked when somebody goes postal...
As i said... be a whore...
or become a communist...
It's your choice...
The future is waiting...
RTFA: Read the f...ing article!
Then you might have noticed the little fact that he came up with the most of the idea -before- he entered the employment.
According to his own testemony 80% were done before beeing employed in that company. The last 20% was when he was on a vecation. He offered the idea to the company (that was the actual bad) and tried to negotiate a deal, giving him percentage of the savings it would introduce. Then they suited him.
Read and learn.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
The moral of this story is: Don't work for big companies. They will try to enforce this kind of thing. Work for small startups who won't even be around in a year, much less worry about intellectual property. They are more worried about staying afloat to care about nonsnese like this.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
First, he signed a contract without fully understanding the terms or consulting with a lawyer to explain it to him. When you go about the business of selling your soul, you really need to read the fine print.
Second, he went to the company and told them he had a brilliant idea, even though he hadn't put anything down on paper yet. He should've just quit his job, then developed his idea. There would have been no way for the company to prove that he came up with the idea while he was employed by them.
By the way, this guy may have a beautiful mind, but he sure has an ugly webpage.
Well, certainly he should have been keeping some sort of inventor's log. He probably wanted to read his employment contracts a little closer. Most importantly ...
WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH WOULD YOU DECIDE TO WASTE TIME REPRESENTING YOURSELF???
The legal system isn't about fairness or what makes sense; it's about legality. Lawyers spend their lives navigating the legal system. They know how to deal with credibility issues, such as claiming that you came up with an idea solely in your head, without any notes or scratching evers made on any piece of paper, and that you finished it up while you were on vacation.
I'm glad this ruling was made. Not for the horrible precedent it sets regarding companies and intellectual property. For the cautionary lesson that no matter how smart you are, if you're not trained in the field of law, don't represent yourself.
These contracts dont matter. All the company has to do is claim that your previous work is a 'trade secret' and constrain you on that.
Just sign the agreement with the last name of "Doesntagree" or "Noway" or "Idontthinkso" or something bogus or write in an ammendment that
sais something like "All my personal inventions will remain my own property and I am free to work for whomever I chose" basically nullifying the whole agreement. The company won't usually care until it's too late.
Someone should come up with boilerplate ammendments to employment contracts that we can just print out and staple in that neuters the whole thing so we peons can easily insist on some basic rights.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
According to the article, Evan Brown's solution had nothing to do with what the company was doing. However, companies have a right to protect themselves against unethical people profiting from inventions developed for the company or with company resources.
Assuming your employer allowed you to modify your agreement before you signed it, how would you rewrite it to reflect an adequate protection of both the employee and the employer? Better yet, if you worked for a concerned and ethical company, and you were in charge of writing such an agreement, how would you craft it so that it protected both yourself as an employee and your company.
Here's one attempt. Any comments?
I'm sorry, but you seem to be dispensing legal advice with WAY to much confidence. Not to mention the advice you're dispensing (It's no big deal if you sign it or not, the courts are reasonable) go against the rediculous reality in many other states, as demonstated by this and many other stories.
You better be careful with your complicent, "it's probably not that bad" thinking and do a little more investigating before you tell everybody to dismiss the warnings.
Secondly, while your state may have fair employment IP laws now, don't expect the trend to continue, especially when your state starts trying to lure high tech companies to your neck of the woods and when people are to ignorant to care and too complicent to even voice dissent.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Ok, let's take the stance that any idea (as the company wants) belongs to the company as-a-whole.
Ok, what if the idea that the employee has is deadly, detrimental, or illegal? If the company owns an idea, shouldn't they (the company) be liable for that idea as well?
Basically, if a person (a whack-job nut) has an idea to nerve gas Tokyo (or any city) and gets tossed in a psych ward because of it (and this sort of thing has happened before) and a similar idea pops into the head of an employee under such contract, then isn't the company instantly guilty just as the nut-job?
I bet the companies freak out at that one. Too bad this guy didn't have some kind of proof that his idea was devised prior to being hired.
There's his first mistake. For anything more than suing a spammer YOU NEVER GO PRO SE! When will people get it through their thick melons that they don't know the law well enough to argue against a high-priced lawyer?! ARGH! Even if they have watched enough Law & Order to talk the talk, the judge still won't give them credit and will bias in favor of the one that passed the bar. We shouldn't be sympathizing with this guy. We should be blaming him for his inaction that caused a precedent to be set that can be used to affect all of us. This guy would have most likely won if he had just highered a decent lawyer.
Brown was ordered to pay Alcatel's legal fees, which exceed $330,000. ...Moreover, Brown asserts that he began developing the idea in 1975, well before his employment with DSC began in 1987, and had achieved about 80 percent of the solution. In March 1996, Brown claims, he mentally solved the remaining 20 percent while vacationing.
In that case I would argue this in court:
Fine. You can have the idea... but you owe me $400 thousand for the time you didn't pay me to develop the idea to 80% in the period from 1975 to 1987 (12 years!).
If they take your TIME without PAYING you for it, then its THEFT OF SERVICE! Remember that should you ever have to deal with such a company as this.
In the first case, the one where you were told to sign the contract during the interview, you could have signed it, and made a case in court that your signature was obtained under duress -- namely, that the company-in-question used unfair leverage (your *desperate* need for a job) to get you to sign a highly unfair contract. Contracts signed under duress aren't binding.
In the second case, I would have fired up OpenOffice (which handles Word DOC files just fine), struck out the portions I didn't like, then signed it and turned it in. I'd say there's a ninety-percent chance that they won't read it, and that it'll just be thrown in your employee file; if the time ever comes to take you into court, well, they don't have a leg to stand on.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
So, I developed a way to have the odd percentage points of all of the tax withholdings within the company moved into my personal account. I did it on company time, using company resources, profited handsomely, and came to work in my new red Ferrari. Does that mean that I am not liable for the software I developed because it is owned by the company? So, do I get to keep the car?
Oh, sorry, Richard Pryor did that already.
"The way you think it is may not be the way it is at all." St. Oran
But he should be paid if he came up with something useful.
HA! Hahahahaha!!! *Ahem*
Sorry.
I am an engineer, and I design parts for production and sale. It never works that way. If we design something new, we get a small bonus, and our name on the patent, but the company has the rights to it. It is probably the biggest complaint by the engineers that if someone from HR or accounting finds a way to save the company thousands of dollars, the get to become "Associate of the Year," and get a free trip to Japan. If an Engineer does the same thing, or designs a part that makes the company lots of money, that's just part of his job. We don't even get overtime.
Sorry, small rant.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
If this shit was going on where I work (a very small company) the remaining techies would band together and tell our bosses to back off. They may not listen at first but when everybody starts taking long lunch breaks while making veiled references to job interviews they would get the message.
If it doesn't relate to my job responsibilities and nobody at work asked me to do it then my employer has no rights to it, contract be damned.
Yup. Mod this as +1, The Truth.
I work at AlcaHell too, and while I didn't know Evan personally, some of this colleagues still remain here and they shake their heads in shame. It's a shame Alcatel ran Evan into the ground (he lives in a metal barn west of Ft. Worth, last I heard), and its an even bigger shame that Evan 'didn't play the game' right.
He wanted more blingbling than DSC was willing to pay. Then DSC morphed into an even bigger legal giant (Alcatel), and he didn't have a prayer.
So unfortunate.
What's even more ironic is the very code he wanted to reverse engineer was farmed out to India to be redone. Been finished for over a year now, and is already employed in the switches OS. A day late and a dollar short...
Penny for your thoughts?
How do you force somebody to reveal an idea? What if after losing the court case he told Alcatel that his secret technique really invoved running the data through a pseudo-random number generator while shaking a vooodo stick?
My rights don't need management.
[E-Mail history]
a r0 2/care.html
1 0. html
http://www.unixguru.com/history.html
[stories related to case & IP ownership]
http://www.troatie.com/ownership.html
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/m
http://www.bloomberg.com/marketsmagazine/ft2_00
It beats the crap out of severence.
Lets say I can claim that I planned, designed, discussed, and coded a project of 1,000 hours over a 1 year period. The company claims it, and I am hourly making $20 per hour. This means that they owe me $30,000 in back wages. I submit a bill, if they don't pay, I take them to our Department of Labor.
The point is that it does not prevent them from taking it, but it should make them think long and hard before doing so. Especially if it is obvious I did place a lot of work into something and I am not telling them how much...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The worst part about this, is the realization that many of these contracts signed by an employee are written to be INTENTIONALLY deceitful.
The words are cluttered with jargon and are written in a manner so they can be interpreted in virtually any context ensuring the employer always has the upper hand.
All it takes is for people to step back, and say "I won't sign this". As others have said you will probably loose the chance for that job, but if enough people follow suit, the contracts WILL change. 100% of the crap we bitch about on Slashdot from the DMCA to Microsoft is our fault. We fell asleep at the wheel, and it's time for us to re-take the driver's seat.
On another note, what did Alcatel stand to gain from this? This "idea" had not even been written on paper , yet Alcatel spent $330,000 in legal fees to prevent Brown from doing anything with this "idea".
Either Brown's idea is potentially groundbreaking enough that Alcatel thought it would loose money if Brown went to a competitor, or few a high level executives had a personal vendetta against Brown, I suspect the latter.
I don't think Alcatel has thought this one through, enough. If they want to own all of the ideas in their employees' heads, shouldn't they also be responsible for the idiots that come up with viruses and mail bombs? Are they allowed to "pick and choose" what they want to own? I didn't think it worked that way, but, of course IANAL.
Say an employee is working for a big corporation which makes its profits
from exploiting employee ideas for their own use.
Assume that this employee indeed signed the standard inventions disclosure
agreement with the company.
Now say that this employee developed a very cool software based on GPLed
source code. So obviously this new software is GPLed. Assume that this
employee used company time and resources to develop this software, but
without negligence of his(her) primary duties.
What can the company do to own the rights for this cool software ?
They cannot revoke GPL since its based on GPLed source code. What happens
then ?
DO NOT PANIC
This RCW, in fact, was what I quoted when giving my "list of inventions", indicating that I claimed ownership for any inventions or publications which I created in the past, present, or future, and had no intention of listing them, as they did not fall under the types of inventions or publications that were covered under the law.
This was four years ago. I wasn't in a desperate need for a job, and I hadn't even heard of OpenOffice then. But I would definitely have loved to do that, to make the tweak in the contract and let them have that. Hopefully they wouldn't pull a "You need to sign our official copy here. We just sent it to your recruiter so you could read it ahead of time." Of course my response would then be "How do I know that one is exactly the same as the one I read yesterday?"
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Let's take the opposite side. Assume that you did own all ideas you came up with on your own time even if they are related to your work.
/. till 6pm, then you think about a solution. The next day:
Great, so now every employee will do his best to NOT think while working. That way, any solutions or ideas he comes up with will be his and he'll charge the company extra.
Company: Your next job is to optimize our backend system
You: Okay.
So, you read
You: I have a solution but I came up with it after company hours therefore it's mine and you're going to have to pay me extra for it.
Hopefully you can all see this would be incredibly unworkable. The company would never own anything, they'd be paying you for nothing because you could claim every idea you ever had was thought of outside work "The solution came to me in a dream". "I was taking a shower and I thought this up". "During lunch I was talking about this with Joe and we both came up this this solution".
Also, just fyi, but by federal law, salaried employeed do not have fixed hours. The assumption is that being salaried you are a professional and will get the job done on time but in your own way. Having no fixed hours could also be a way of saying that in effect, you are always working. They pay you $50K, $100K, $150K a year for your ideas.
Of course you can sign something that lets you keep your ideas. Fortunately my bosses todate have been cool with that. I program games, I wanted to make a small shareware product on my own time, I asked for permission just to be safe, got it (in writing).
Neither of have much use for Visual Studio though.
That's a bad attitude. First, just about everyone has to sign one of these odius things. Second, a company that does not expect it's employess to think is doomed to fail. Third a company that's so rapicious about what it's employees comes up with, but does not expect them to think is likely to get what it expects: zero employee participation. Companies that act this way are going to thwart their best thinkers who will respond in kind.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Eso, Bitz here. I say Congrats on your 13th first post LoL
and that this guy is a fag, and that Hackingthemainframe.com PwNz
Strok3r says:
http://hackingthemainframe.com 0wnz yer ass!
http://hackingthemainframe.com
Pork Pork Pork Pork Pork
I like cheese.
hackingthemainframe.com
Strok3r says:
Lucky number 13, heh
http://hackingthemainframe.com
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All your base are belong to us
Doze frogz are gunna pay
Something I read somewhere else made me suspect that Alcatel is guilty of a bit of idiocy as well. It said something like "scientists looked at it and found that there remain gaps in his disclosure". Hell, any yahoo can stipulate that a system to translate code from one language to another would need to have certain properties, and even describe those properties in some detail. But actually getting the programming done is going to be the hard part, and it's pretty clear nobody has done this. If anyone had, he could write compilers that would make every language, even high-level stuff like Visual Basic or Delphi, run as fast as assembly. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
So this guy has sufferred bankruptcy, and Alcatel has spent the time and money driving him into bankruptcy, for a system that clearly hasn't been and won't be developed. The only winners here were the original owners of the company that Alcatel bought. The company probably got a higher valuation on the basis of the potential outcome of this dumb suit.
later,
Jess
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
HP scoffed at the idea of a personal computer. Steve Wozniak got them to sign off on the idea.
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