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Corporate Espionage Involving a Patent At Microsoft
thefickler writes "Microsoft is taking a former employee, Miki Mullor, to court for securing a job at the company in order to steal information that would help with a patent infringement case he filed against PC makers Dell, HP, and Toshiba (in which Microsoft quickly became enmeshed). And while it appears that Mullor did the wrong thing, some pundits are asking: 'If you believed that your patent had been infringed, wouldn't you be tempted to do the same thing?'"
No, but you can steal someone else's labor, by not paying them for the information they produced, or the metal car pieces they welded, or the floors they sweeped, or.....
Theft of labor is a human rights violation and if a person does produce a new idea or item, and XYZ corporation takes that idea/item without compensation for the labor involved, a crime has been committed.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I suppose it all depends on what you see as being the "Right Thing". I would suggest that:
Now, in best Groklaw tradition, IANAL, however this seems to me that when it comes to fairness the guy might have been able to get similar information from 'dumpster diving' and certainly seems to have been vindicated. So what we're really seeing here is:
It would not surprise me if they try their old dirty tricks and try to put the US case on hold whilst they visit global MS friendly courtrooms to get some judgements onside in other jurisdictions just as they did with Lindows.
Bastards.
They lost the cotton. The difference between tangible property and information is that if someone else takes your tangible property then you don't have it any more, and if someone takes information then both of you have it.
Put another way: only one person can use a boll of cotton. An unlimited number of people can use an idea. Someone else using my idea does not preclude me also using it; Microsoft publishing a book I wrote does not preclude my also publishing it. It may make it impractical for me to profit from the book I wrote, but that falls under the category of "unfair competition," not "taking away a piece of property that I own." It's wrong, and it's also fundamentally different from stealing.
The language of copyright holders - "own an idea," "intellectual property," "stolen ideas," "piracy," is calculated to make the public forget the fundamental differences between ideas and objects, and support laws and policies that equate intellectual property with physical property. This is to the benefit of copyright (and patent) holders, who can then rely on the government to bear the cost of enforcing their copyrights, among other benefits.
The preponderance of people who claim that we have a "right" to "own" and profit from ideas shows how well this brainwashing is working. Apparently it goes so far as to make some think that a company can "steal" profits that haven't even been earned yet. The reality of intellectual property cases is quite different; see Polaroid v. Kodak.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.