Slashdot Mirror
Can I Be Fired For Refusing To File a Patent?
An anonymous reader writes "I am a developer for a medium-sized private technology company getting ready for an IPO. My manager woke up one morning and decided to patent some stuff I did recently. The problem is, I'm strongly opposed to software patents, believing that they are stifling innovation and dragging the technology industry down (see all the frivolous lawsuits reported here on Slashdot!). Now, my concern is: what kind of consequences could I bring on myself for refusing to support the patent process? Has anybody been in a similar position and what was the outcome?"
In many states, you can be let go at any time for any reason. It really comes down to what you value more, your principals or your job. Of course, if you are a valued employee, and if you are coming up with patentable ideas, I'd assume you are, how you broach the subject may help influence how stable your job is. Instead of first saying "I refuse," instead consider, "I object," followed by your reasoning. If they then push the issue past your objections, you can always move on to "I refuse."
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
Does the phrase "at will employment" ring a bell?
Choose your battles in business wisely -- making a philosophical stand could have a heavy financial impact on you.
You may not "get fired" over taking a stand -- but it would probably put you in the "not a team player" camp.
Career-wise, that may be even worse (financially) than being fired. If your Company is planning an IPO, they probably have a substantial legal department... And enemies in Legal (the same people usually championing the patent process) are the worse kind of enemies to have. You may start getting the cold shoulder at review time, bonus time, and option-allotment time... Legal, unfortunately, isn't quiet when they have gripes -- and they usually have the means to pull strings like that!
There's a very easy fix for this.
Make an anonymous posting somewhere, describing the innovation you came up with. If it has been disseminated before, it cannot be patented.
This is a fairly common process with companies that either cannot afford to patent or don't want to. They put in a 1 page add in some random magazine (Sheep Shearer Magazine, New Zealand) describing the invention and order a copy of the magazine. Then when someone else comes along and threatens a lawsuit because they patented the process, they simply show the magazine again and Bob's your uncle.
Maybe Slashdot could make an "invention" section for just this kind of stuff.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I think a better question is... is your opposition to patents so strong that you would be willing to stand up and lose your job for it?
I've been in a situation that forced me to stand up for what I believe in and was fired for it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, because I wouldn't be able to work at a place that compromised my value system...
So is the question really whether they're able to fire you for not doing it?
How strong are your convictions, really?
Basically I did something I thought was obvious, and the company wanted to patent it (which required me to sign a patent application). I said I wasn't willing to sign something asserting that the invention was non-obvious. Surprisingly, the lawyer was ok with this objection (maybe he'd heard it before). He pointed out that the patent application doesn't itself assert non-obviousness anywhere, it only requires me to state that I did the work (which was true). Non-obviousness is determined by the examiners. If their assessment differs from mine, that's not my fault.
I too am opposed to software patents and wish they would go away, but a situation where the stuff I work on doesn't get patented, but others patent stuff to use against me, is unilateral disarmanent, which is just stupid. I went ahead and signed the application and the patent issued a while later, adding one to the tens of thousands of other stupid and basically useless patents out there. That's not such a great situation, but I figure I signed up for it when I agreed to work for a non-free software startup to begin with. I similarly am opposed to excess carbon emissions but still drive my car more than I really have to.
The startup I worked at eventually failed, so now I write free software for a living. It doesn't pay as well but I like it better in other regards.
Anyway, my advice is sign the paper--if you didn't want to do that then you shouldn't have taken the money. Think of it as injecting one more piece of patent pollution into the software atmosphere. Hopefully there will be a mass invalidation of those patents sometime. Meanwhile, if you don't want to contribute to its worsening, consider that you're not working at the right place.
Filing for a patent does not mean you have a patent, it could take years of iterations etc to get a definite patent on something and even then people may still contest it. My suggestion is that if you're inclined to stick to your morals (which btw I don't totally agree with) , to go with the flow but sort of keep the filing so general and vague that any monkey could come along and contest it. At the end of the day you're not a patent lawyer, you can't be accused of not doing your job properly.
Also don't bite the hand that pays your salary.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
File the prior art together with the patent application and make the application so bad that it's rejected.
That should teach your boss.
Or file the whole thing on slashdot as an AC. But let a friend write it so the writing style isn't matching your style.
But maybe your boss was asked for possible patents from an investor. Venture capitalists usually looks for companies to invest in by measuring the patents they have. Which in the end doesn't say a thing about how well the company actually can fare. It may also be that your boss (if he owns the company) is under way of selling it and wants to get as much money out of it as possible, which may mean that you can get fired anyway for other reasons.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Notice how Microsoft patents, for example, are owned by Microsoft Corporation, not by the individual coders who came up with whatever algorithm/mechanism/whatever the company is trying to patent.
They're owned by Microsoft, but (AFAIK) the original inventor is still listed by name. When I was in this situation, that was the part that most rankled: that it was 100% the company's idea to file a patent for this stupidly broad and obvious idea, but that my own name would end up on the paperwork. So if this is the case for you too, perhaps you could try and persuade your boss, or someone else, that the conversations you had with them while developing the idea actually mean that they are the real inventor, and should have their name on the patent instead of yours.
FWIW the eventual outcome in my case was that the (UK) patent office rejected the patent, citing as prior art something so left-field that connecting it to the patent application seemed to me much more of an intellectual leap, than coming up with the idea we were trying to patent in the first place. Or, in other words, the company spend thousands of pounds on absolutely nothing and learned not to do that again. Which is a good outcome.
Peter
Just BCC to a Gmail account.
1 months later google patents that idea...
I Kid! I kid!