Slashdot Mirror
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.
Besides, I don't think they said "Please?"
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Yet another slashdot story filled with rampant speculation and innuendo.
So, let's all rant and rave for 500 messages. Then, in 3 days, the real story will come out and be the complete opposite. And it won't ever be mentioned again on slashdot.
Knee-jerk-pot-smoking hippies! The whole bunch of you!
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
How did Apple find out that one of their employer's had created this?
Did he run around Apple HQ boasting about it? Seems a pretty dumb thing to do, these kinda of clauses (where employers maintain rights to your creations) seem pretty common.
Why didn't he release it under an alias?
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
...until there are a flood of posters who mistakenly assume that the headline refers to Apple trying to claim ownership of the shareware concept? Perhaps "Apple Claims Ownership of Netflix" would have been better.
Does anyone know of any simular such laws outside of california?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Maybe Steve Jobs order a lot of DVD's online... He needs to streamline the ordering process.
I hate to say it, but that's how it works. Companies do this all the time and I'm sure apple will make it right.
Let's take the Stickies application written by Jens Alfke for example:
You can read the whole story about how Jens wrote the stickies program as an Apple employee and had it claimed as Apple's while they made sure it was dealt with at the same time here.
-davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
...Am shocked that a corporation would dare do such a thing.
Now, what's the article about again?
This space for rent.
I felt like I was being a little paranoid when I demanded that my last contract - which stated that my "full productive capacity" belonged to my employer - be modified to make it clear that work I did on my time was my own.
Heh. I'll never silly about making such demands again.
Read your contracts, folks. Point out absurdities ("all your thoughts are belong to us") and refuse to sign until they're fixed. If they say "well, we don't mean that..." - get it in writing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This was discussed a while ago on MacSlash. The author directly wrote in apparently.
Here's the link: Employer Grabs Netflix Fanatic Software From Creator
And I'll say it again:
.... to the employer's business.
:(
Section 2870 does *NOT* protect you if you're a software developer. Check out sub section 1. It includes an exemption for the company if your invention relates at the time of conception
The company's case against you is pretty straighforward: "We're in the business of making and selling software. Your invention is software. Hand it over."
And they don't even have to pat you on the head for writing it.
I hope homeboy has more luck trying to exert his rights under the CLC than other people who've fallen for it have had.
You mean, Apple has pulled back software after it has been released to the Internet? That's rich! Did that work for the DeCSS code? Or the Adobe eBook decrypter?
The one foolproof way of ensuring a particular bit of information is forever available on the net is to declare it illegal...
Expect the source code to show up any minute now...
Because the boilerplate agreements that employees sign these days almost always have something in them to that effect. It's evil; it's also, in most cases, a condition of getting (or keeping) a job, and with the tech economy the way it is, most programmers will sign away the rights to their firstborn if it means getting paid enough.
... Does it suck? Hell yeah. Is there anything I can do about it? Not if I want a job and a degree.
I have to worry about this kind of thing all the time. I work in biotech, and am a grad student in comp. bio.; although the applications I develop for school are in a somewhat different field than those I develop for work, it's conceivable that my employer could lay claim to some of my academic work -- and, of course, that my school could lay claim to just about anything I do. By and large, I trust both my boss and my professors, but
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Sherlock never really impressed me- until I tried the latest version; they've included a fair bit of stuff, and at least at work and at home on cable, it's pretty zippy compared to getting the same info via the web. The dictionary search has been pretty handy.
What amazes me is the near vacuum of useful sherlock modules- there's a website here or there that has maybe a dozen or two, of which only a few are actually interesting. There's a fedex module, but no UPS module.
What is MUCH worse is the distribution model for sherlock modules- you don't actually get the module, you get a LINK to the module, and if that website goes down, the module essentially stops working after a while even if you've added it to Sherlock; it only caches them, doesn't download them(which is why it takes a while to access a module if you haven't used sherlock in a while). Stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID! Not only is it unreliable and a waste of bandwidth, but it has great exploit potential- breaking into one account and an author's module could deliver all sorts of goodies right to an attacker's doorstep, and nobody would be the wiser. Not to mention, maybe Fedex decides they don't like Joe Blo's module and DMCA him- everyone looses their Fedex module.
Please help metamoderate.
From a legal point of view, that is. Section 2870 disallows claiming of rights over software written entirely in the employee's own time
Surely this is covered by the first of those provisions - and possibly the second, depending on what the guy's job at Apple is...++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
So the author of the code thinks that Apple is violating CA law. Did the author use ANY resources from Apple in developing the product? For instance - did Apple give him his home machine as part of his employment benefit? Where did the compiler come from? Did he have access or use internal Apple tools in developing the product?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes - he would be liable to their claims. That's why you REALLY gotta go the extra mile in separating yourself from your employer. If you work for Apple - develop software for Windows as an example.
I don't know if the guy is being screwed or if Apple is within their rights. I think Apple is being heavy handed - but I don't know all the facts either.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Anyone else click this article thinking Apple was claiming a patent on shareware? Maybe I've been reading /. too long. Maybe I'm still not used to the editors deliberately allowing sensational headlines.
Nosce te Ipsum
Did you sign a contract that states that what you create belongs to your employer? If so, then they're not stealing, they're taking what rightfully belongs to them -- you're the one ripping them off.
The assumption, when you work for a company, is that you will not be attempting to compete with the company you work for. It's like doing freelance consulting in your spare time when you work for a consulting company during the day. At the very least, it's shady.
It seems like you don't want to contribute to the company you work for, you're just there for the paycheck. That's a really bad attitude.
evil adrian
Evan Brown used to work for DSC Communications and ran into the same problem.
Except in Evan's case, he had his idea before he ever went to work for DSC and until ordered by the judge, it remained an idea, not an invention. The judge ordered him to develop it for DSC without pay.
Check out Evan's web site on the issue
this isn't a story about apple so much as a story about employees rights to the fruits of their labor.
lysergically yours
Does this put Apple among Big Evil Inc. conglomerate or is this OK because it's Apple?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
While for obvious reasons Apple would have liked to keep this quiet, there's as little information to show they were wrong as there is to show that they were right. There's a fair chance he used Apple-given computers to develop this, or that he used 'trade secrets' or information he learned while working at Apple, and that the dispute amounted to them pointing this out and him saying 'What are you talking about?'
Don't get me wrong - I hate the thought that what I work on on my own time would get claimed. But we really have no way of knowing for certain that the developer was on the right side of the law.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Hell...I had one company offer me a job with the conditions that 1) anything I code, at any time, belongs to them, 2) any ideas I have, at any time, belongs to them, 3) in the event the I leave the company, I would not work in any field that competes with them for at least 2 years. The theory behind the "any time" clause was that I *might* be influenced by my work and create something using that influence, therefore it was in their best interest to claim everything. The non-competition clause is standard, but if I had taken the job then I wouldn't have been able to take any programming job for 2 years considering their software *could possibly* be used in many fields. The entire contract was written to make sure they owned you. Someone could fight a lot of it in court, but considering you wouldn't have a job it would be hard to pay for a lawyer. I pity the poor bastards that work at that place...the entire thing was family-owned and run, and they worked 12 hour days. And they expected you to keep up with them when needed, which was pretty much all the time. Some jobs just aren't worth taking, no matter how desparate you are.
As I sit rewriting a contract with a vendor, I am reminded of the two purposes of contracts:
(1) To clearly outline the rights and responsibilities of all parties. By putting these things in writting, you force yourself to really analyse just what it is you are agreeing to.
(2) To establish a legally defensable position in court. Should the two parties have a disagreement about any of the conditions set forth in the contract, the contract is used to "remind" them of just what they agreed to.
So for all those who say Apple should leave him alone or should buy it from him or whatever, they are considerably late to the party. If in fact the employment contract stated the rules clearly, (no company time or equipment) and he wilfully violated that agreement, then the options become:
(1) Submit to Apple, or
(2) Find a providion of the contract which Apple violated, allowing room for a counter suit, negotiation of a new contract, or possibly having the contract thrown out.
IANAL
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Non-compete is completely different from "all your ideas are belong to us".
Uh, his employer tries to lay claim to work done in his off hours, and he's the one with the bad attitude?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
according to the tidbits article linked off the authors' homepage, "Netflix Fanatic reads the cookie information from your Web browser, so you don't even need to configure it with login information" - i take this to mean that if there is a cookie there already, visiting the netflix page manually or programmatically via the app will take you to the "i'm logged in part of the site" - i'd like to think that if this cookie wasn't there or had expired, there is no way the app could manipulate your queue without re-logging in.
By reading this posting, you implicitly agree that all code you have written in the past, are writing now and in the future belongs to me. I would appreciate it if you just zipped up all your code and sent it along. Thanks.
Does anyone else find this funny since Apple basically got started because HP waivered their right to Woz's personal computer idea.
Please, post about innovations, not about such idiocies, otherwise it doesn't matter.
/. postings.
Yeah, that'll be much more objective than current
All sarcasm aside, this is not a story about Apple, this is a story about a company claiming ownership of an employee's work in his spare time.
It doesn't matter if it's Apple or any other company.
And the MS-bashing isn't that bad anymore, just look at the "Microsoft to Launch MSN Music Service in 2004" 2 topics down.
What's bashing about that one?
It's objective and plenty informative.
Silly zealots.
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
instead of shareware, he wouldn't be in this mess now.
It's interesting how many people I see 'soft pedaling' this because it's Apple Computer doing it.
If this was Microsoft doing this, there would already by 700 comments and the Slashdot site would be bogged down and unresponsive because of the fury.
This is dangerous stuff, folks. If this is a precedent, then all the employers of people who have contributed to the Linux kernal, and to various GPL's and BSD licensed products can step forward and claim their chunk of code, too.
It's dismaying that so many 'Apple Loyalists' have joined in on the Slashdot 'Anything Microsoft Does is Eeeevile but any other company is okay' choir. We don't need a 'new master, same as the old master' ascending to power, but some here seem to think it would be okay.
A Good Intro to NetBS
> but how can you claim anything on
> what people do in their own time.
This is a question I once wondered about, too. Based on my experience with software companies, the short answer is that employers will insist you sign an "intellectual property agreement" that specifically grants them ownership of anything you create while under their employ.
How do they get you to sign such a silly thing? Well, here's how it's gone down in my life (outside of California); YMMV:
You work for company A. You want to work for company B. You negotiate with B, get an offer letter, and resign politely from A. You've crossed your Rubicon at this point; you've cast your lot with B and going back to A would be hard. But, you're happy to be free of A so you enjoy some time off between jobs.
At the apppointed time, you show up at company B and start working. Some time on or after your first day of work, your new masters present you with an "Intellectual Property Agreement" and demand you sign away your entire soul. If company B has played their cards optimally, this will be the first time you have seen this document. They will tell you that your employment cannot continue unless you sign, and will attempt to intimidate you into signing on the spot.
This is a tough spot to find yourself in. Company B has chosen the time and place for the argument - you have much less bargaining power now that you have started with B than you had when you were still at A and negotiating with B for a new job. Your choice now is: sign or find a new job.
So, your best defense is to demand to see their "IP" agreement during salary negotiation, and refuse to sign while you still have your company A job.
Failing that, if Company B is small - like a dozen-person startup - you can organize collective bargaining. The tables are turned if at least half of the company's employees refuse to sign. I've been involved in a group that did this. Ultimately, we still had to sign, but we managed to force management into including the "your work is yours" provisions from California law into their IP agreement first.
Good luck dealing with all the Company B's out there...
- Tim
So that means Apple's bad today, right?
I half expect to see a post praising Sony in a couple of hours--wait, no, Sony's only good on Tuesday afternoon in odd months. My error.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Did some leave the door open and let a Human Resources Director in here?
Why would anyone pay a shareware fee for a program to manage his Netflix queue? Is it so hard to just start a browser?
OverlyBroadIntellectualPropertyAgreements discusses exactly this sort of problem.
The "Fine Arts Waiver" described on the page is definitely something I will not work without. With some companies it's just a matter of asking for it.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign or offer to assign any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall NOT apply to an invention for which no equipment, supplies, facility or trade secret information of the employer was used
According to commonly used EULAs, wouldn't Mac OS X itself be considered "trade secret information of the employer"?
Will I retire or break 10K?
You're sounding a whole lot like a Apple fanboy who doesn't want to hear anything but praise for your favorite platform. I'm not here to tell you how great you are because of the system you bought (nor am I here to tell you that you're a moron for buying the system). I'm sure that there's a Mac fanboy page/blog where you can discuss how great your system (and the company who created it) is all day long.
This post has nothing to do with that, nor is it an attempt to tear at the fabric of your favorite platform. This looks like reasonable reporting of some suspicous behavior by a large company to me. Just because you happen to really like that company doesn't mean that the story shouldn't be reported...right?
-Turkey
I've had this once before where a previous employer caused me to pull out of a big name Open Source project because they didn't like me doing anything in my own time. Saying that, I only stayed there for a couple of months after that, as I was that pissed off with them because of it.
Unless of course you copy some idea from work and make your own version of it.
That's the worst one, and the hardest to keep away from as well. At least in my current contract I've not got that problem - most of the stuff I've done I already done before, so a good 20% of it is already mine, and open sourced as well with the CVS on sourceforge, so if something did go ary I just show them the file dates and cvs logs ;-)
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
I work as an independent contractor. One of the tests the IRS will use to validate independent contractor status is having more than one client at a time. Starting a few years ago all of the contracts I'd was given contained language that said everything I do belongs to them. I always cross this out and they always say the wording applies only to the work I do on their nickel.I tell them that's fine with me but it needs to be written that way. They always rewrite it in a way I'm comfortable with.
Apple 'brutally crushed' Apple clones going way back into the Apple II days. There were a number of Apple II clones, all run out of business by the Apple legal team.
Also note the Apple Look-n-feel lawsuit. If Apple had won that one, Microsoft wouldn't have been allowed to produce Windows, nor would the X Window System be allowed to exist without paying heavy royalties to Apple. Apple essentially claimed they owned the GUI and claimed it in it's entirety as their own. It's ironic that Microsoft's legal dollars paid for the right for us all to use common GUI elements that otherwise would be Apple Computer property.
There is a LONG history of Free Software folks being strongly against Apple during the look-n-feel suit that seems to have been airbrushed away in recent years.
A Good Intro to NetBS
I wasn't aware Apple was in the Netflix management business.
If Apple had the same type of program in their roadmap, or were considering it (and can PROVE it), AND this employee had access to that program and/or was working on it, THEN Apple would have a claim as you suggest.
However, now that Apple has fully converted to the Dark Side, he would have been much wiser to release it anonymously or dump it in the public domain. He could have still requested $10 donations.
Let his fate be an omen to all that follow...
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
That's what I do when I'm on the job.
What I do off the job, is mine. That's the distinction between an employee and a slave, and it's not being selfish to decline being a slave.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Old, this was on Ars a month ago.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
Ironic that the initial formation of Apple was initially threatened because Woz was working for HP when he invented the Apple I! A supervisor at HP inspected the Apple I and deemed it insignificant enough as to not be a threat...
My employment contract says that everything I write either at work or at home technically belongs to my employer. I can understand that to some extent. While working at an employer you are learning. Can you guarantee that anything you write has not benefitted from knowledge gained while working for you current employer. So such clauses are covering this benefit.
I don't know about the application in question but if there's the possibility it could not have been written by someone other than an employee of Apple even though the author did not use Apple tools or time then Apple does have some rights over it.
It strikes me the guy should have checked his rights first. I discussed this when I joined my company and was told that provided I haven't written anything which is simliar to, or competes with, company products then I should still get approval for open source releases and the like but they would probably be let through on the nod.
No one forced you to work for that company. You knew (or should have known) what you were getting into. Most companies DO own your off-time creations.
I suppose that if you're worried about your employer getting your code, you could always get a job where you ask, "Would you like fries with that?"
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Let's say instead of a shareware app (which sounds pretty useful to me) the guy wrote a destructive email worm that only works on Mac platorms. He writes this on his own time on his own equipment in another country, then releases it to tear up a bunch of marketing companies (who have a high saturation of Mac platforms).
He "owns" that code (and maybe some computers too).
Did he commit the crime? Or did Apple Corp. commit the crime? After all, they own his ass and everything he does or creates, they have the right to financially exploit his artwork, code, writings or anything else. That means he should not get in trouble and Apple Corp. should.
Sorry, but no company owns anything not directly related to the job without prior written contractual agreement (and additional financial compenstation). Anything less is slavery, and as my example above should prove it's also obsurd.
Apple is a big company, so I suppose they have their fair share of clueless lawyers and PHBs so moronic attempts to trample on people's individual rights can be expected.
That doesn't mean they are any less a bunch of assholes for the attempt though. The assholes.
Sure you can. You can design hot rod parts for custom mods for people. You can design race car parts that you can sell to racers. There are all sorts of things you can do.
Just as with software. Just because you are a "software developer" does not mean that all software you develop should therefore be owned by the company if you do it on your own time. It's like being a chef for a restraunt. You can still do catering for parties in your free time and the company doesn't get x% of your profits (unless you use the company's food).
As an employee at a swedish university, I appreciate the swedish laws on the subject:
I own the copyright on everything, even the stuff I do at work.
I even own the patent rights if I invent anything, even if I did it within a government funded university project.
(If you receive private funding, you probably have a contractual agreement waiving some or all of your patent rights, though)
How about that?
What functionality? They fixed a bug that people were exploiting and was never emant to be a feature.
What hesitation? They never said they weren't going to update it. I fact, there very first announcement on the matter was to confirm that they were after people had leapt to the wrong conclusion.
A computer that's 5 or 6 years old and likely has hardware that isn't really up to the job any more. I'm curious, does Windows XP run on a PII?
That's a rather misleading way of putting it as it suggests that Apple's problem is with OSS, when the truth is very different.
And if you read the law BEYOND the part that was quoted, you'll see that the mandatory exclusion of transfer of rights DOESN'T cover this situation.
This work would appear to "relate at the time [...] to the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer". Apple does consumer multi-media software apps for their own platform. An app to "manage rented media queues" would seem to most reasonable people to be clearly "related" to that business.
The inventor can protest all he wants that it was done on his own time with his own tools and it doesn't matter. Unless he can convince a judge or jury otherwise, 2870. (a) 1 says that 2870. (a) doesn't apply. So his contract to assign his inventions to Apple is valid.
Apple's view is that they already PAID him for this program. If they let him give it away when they could be selling it (or sitting on it for their own business reasons), they're not just letting him take something that they paid him for. They're also jepoardizing their ownership of EVERYTHING ELSE they paid their employees to do. So why are they paying all these people all this money?
Sounds to me like the situation is this:
1) Guy builds a neat software app and, misunderstanding the situation or thinking that Apple is not interested, thinks it's allright to release and/or sell it on his own.
2) Apple says "Wait a minute! We paid you to give stuff like that to US!"
3) Guy says "Oops! You're right!" and pulls the app.
4) Media finds this out and mentions it.
5) Slashdot reader doesn't recognize that the exception in 2870 (a) 1 applies, so he thinks that it's an assault on open source and composes a post saying so.
6) Slashdot editor posts the new item essentially verbatim.
and the flap is on.
2870. is the engine of California's hi-tek booms. By letting inventors keep and develop inventions that are outside their employers' interests and non-competing, it promotes an explosion of inventiveness and startups. But it falls short of giving workers the right to develop potentially competing works that their employer didn't explicitly assign them to create or doesn't wish to pursue at the moment, and didn't give them PERMISSION to take back. Some would even argue that this is deliberate, a necesary provision to avoid killing the succeeding generations of geese just as they start laying the golden eggs.
So let's not misconstrue the law. If the developer decides to press his claim and can show in court that the exception applies, it's his. If he doesn't or can't, it's Apple's. And if you don't like it, get the law changed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...well, someone had better kill it before it collapses the fragile idea that is this universe into a singularity of nothingness.
--- Ban humanity.
If you're a writer for a newspaper, it may prevent you from starting your own newspaper.
Possibly, but the idea of starting a paper while working at another job is patently ridiculous - you wouldn't have time to sleep!
If you're a telemarketer, it may prevent you from creating some super-whamodyne call-making machine to sell on your own.
You know, those things are mostly illegal. I think only charities and political campaign workers are allowed to dial you and play a message automatically
You're right, a judge would agree with you, because the examples you cite are much broader than the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that the individual appears to be a programmer for Apple. Thus, Apple may have a legitimate claim to programs that he develops that run under an Apple OS.
That doesn't really make sense - it would mean that if an Apple employee write a photo retoucher or a recipe database, or anything that ran on a Mac, Apple would own it. You have to be more specific, such as relating it to a specific product that Appple produces, such as iTunes or system extensions.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Apple's PR department is probably just shaking their heads. Everytime the suits at Apple (Jobs?) pull a stunt like this, it probably blows a huge hole in their promotional budget.
Lets look at some simple options:
1. Offer to buy the program outright. $250,000?
2. Steal it from the creative developer probably under threat of his job, defend it in court, have it appear on Slashdot and allocate another $2.5 million for the PR budget to make us look good.
3. All the goodwill Apple was building with developers to get them to write software -- down the drain; which ultimately means fewer programs for the users.
A lot of crap seems to keep happening around the whole Sherlock program. Does someone need to be spanked? Is it Jobs who is doing this or some clueless lawyer who needs his bonus this week?
Last time, they gave an Apple Developer Design award to the guy who wrote Watson and then completely ripped his idea off the next year and gave it away in Sherlock. The bad PR and extremely negative developer feelings round that debacle was certainly not worth the money.
It continues to amaze me that Jobs will go out and buy Logic to starve out the Windows audio market, but he won't award creative development on his own platform. It's a good thing we like those nice shiny case designs.
Expecting bonuses and a paycheck for doing your job...that you agreed to do for only the paycheck. Sounds like a bad idea. This is one thing wrong with the RIAA/MPAA business model - residuals may spur innovation, but they suppress sales if structured incorrectly.
Not long ago, I made some changes that saved my employer in excess of $500,000 per year...but my paycheck covered this activity, so I certainly couldn't expect an _ex post facto_ bonus.
Greed is good as a motivator, but the motivation comes as anticipation BEFORE the act, and it must be uniformly applied.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
So let's ask some simple questions.
If Apple can't demonstrate either of these things, it's hard to argue that they already paid him for the work, in which case the guy appears to have a legitimate grievance.
Legally speaking, the phrase "the employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer" seems to place the burden of proof firmly on Apple: they have to show that they were doing, or definitely going to do, something along the same lines.
At this point, it's up to the legal system to interpret the relevant law given the specifics of the case. Of course, whether one man can hope to fight a legion of Apple lawyers within the current legal climate of the US is a different question, but the theory is sound.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, well, that's why we want fair competition between all of the computer OS and system manufacturers, and not just one company strong-arming the rest. When there are a number of players, then if one of them tries to strong-arm the rest, the rest squash them.
People didn't like IBM in the past because they were the dominant player and the rest of the industry couldn't stop them if IBM tried strong-arm tactics. In the mainframe biz this is still true, but now there are alternatives to mainframes (PC farms). People don't like Microsoft now because they are so powerful that they can strong-arm basically at will. Linux is changing that.
Most corporations do some good things and some bad things. Very few are basically evil. And a few are basically good.
Apple is like any other corporation. Not all corporations are evil faceless satans. I realize that to a great many people that what I have just said here is heretical...
So Apple goes to the court and says "Our business is to develop software [to be used on hardware we produce]." This is pretty clear cut. I don't know anyone who would say otherwise.
At which point the judge asks the employee, "Did you develop software to be used on a Mac?"
He says "yes" and the case is closed.
I know it's 'spooky' or whatever, but this is how it is. I've written code that doesn't belong to me, and I bet zillions of other people have too.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Except that I spoke to the shareware author for this app back when this started weeks ago (before Slashdot picked this up, before the Netflix Fanatic website got recently altered to omit mention of the specific laws), and the author never said, "Oops! You're right!" He pulled the application pending negotiations with his employer's legal department. At the time, I had no idea this guy was working for Apple.
Paraphrasing from the private e-mail that Cricket (the shareware app's author) gave me, he said his employer was making their claims based on 2870 (a) 1, but that this was a sham, and they had no interest other than in putting the application on a shelf and never doing anything with it. Therefore, they're in the wrong. Since the author can't afford to fight this for several reasons, justice will not prevail.
I don't know whether the author is legally within his rights or not. Some claim he is, some claim he should have checked out his rights first.
I also don't know whether Apple is within it's rights or not, but I do know that Apple could have had the decency (or simple common sense in avoiding a PR scandal) to pay him for the software.
And that is what it boils down to really. Decency. I know all the yada yada yada Apple is in the business of making money yada yada and we're hard arsed bastards in this world yada yada, but decency goes a long way to ensuring good PR and employee loyalty and above all customer loyalty.
Whether Steve Jobs knew of this or not, I can only say the following to him: Be careful, Mr Jobs. Losing the loyalty of your employees can lose you the loyalty of your customers, and that it the one thing that Apple has always had above the rest. Don't fuck it up, because in the end, I don't care. I'll drop this Mac and run Linux or Windows if I see no difference between the business practices.
I believe this doesn't hold in California.
I ate my sig.