Apple Claims Ownership of Shareware

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

Comments

Re:How long...

[phoxix]

Mod comment down

Apparently the parent poster does not read the comments of his/her fellow slashdotters. The majority (if not all 1 and up) comments have been on target with the correct discussion.

There is no reason to automagically put down the posters of slahdot in such a fashion.

Sunny Dubey

Re:Sherlock

[Jon Abbott]

Sherlock never really impressed me- until I tried the latest version

Perhaps that is because Apple copied the interface of the shareware program Watson for Sherlock 3... They didn't include all of the same modules though (such as FedEx and UPS package tracking), so Watson still offers some advantages over Sherlock. If you visit the link above, Watson's developers say, "Apple has recently duplicated much of Watson's capabilities with Sherlock 3, but users everywhere are still singing the praises of Watson!"

It seems that the outright copying of a program's features is a disturbing trend people are noticing lately...