This is a difficult question... and one that I think is faced more often than most people think.
For me, the answer comes down to the difference between 'experience' and 'proprietary knowledge'. Experience comes from being given a problem and designing/creating/inventing my own solution/implementation. Proprietary Knowledge comes from looking at or learning about a solution to a problem that I, myself, did not create but exists within the organization I belong to.
In other words, did the developer 'experience' the process of developing the solution the first time, or 'get' the knowledge from outside?
Of course, this has to be tempered with the 'obviousness' guide that the USPTO seems to like to ignore. I mean, there are only so many different ways to implement lots of common components (how many times have you implemented an RTC based on a periodic interrupt?), and regardless of who developed the solution, I don't think any of them really belong to any organization as "proprietary IP" because they are too obvious. (In the language of the USPTO, they fail to be "novel").
It's a difficult balance. Unfortunatly, the only "official" guidance on the topic comes from patent-infringmenet lawsuits, which are just so much fun...:)
I may be out of my mind here... but when I had AOL installed on a computer (cut me some slack... I just moved and couldn't get broadband yet), it used some sort of VPN client to establish communications with their server. IIRC, it even used that VPN system when using a non-dialup connection.
Does this mean that AOL over these connections is against the AUP?
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too earnestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
Slashdot Mirror
For me, the answer comes down to the difference between 'experience' and 'proprietary knowledge'. Experience comes from being given a problem and designing/creating/inventing my own solution/implementation. Proprietary Knowledge comes from looking at or learning about a solution to a problem that I, myself, did not create but exists within the organization I belong to.
In other words, did the developer 'experience' the process of developing the solution the first time, or 'get' the knowledge from outside?
Of course, this has to be tempered with the 'obviousness' guide that the USPTO seems to like to ignore. I mean, there are only so many different ways to implement lots of common components (how many times have you implemented an RTC based on a periodic interrupt?), and regardless of who developed the solution, I don't think any of them really belong to any organization as "proprietary IP" because they are too obvious. (In the language of the USPTO, they fail to be "novel").
It's a difficult balance. Unfortunatly, the only "official" guidance on the topic comes from patent-infringmenet lawsuits, which are just so much fun... :)
Matt
Does this mean that AOL over these connections is against the AUP?
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too earnestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties." -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, published around 1850