Perhaps they were testing to see if you were a responsible adult without having to specifically told what responsible means.
That'd be nonsensical at best. I mean, I had root access to the server that stored all of the company's data... if they're still testing whether I'm trustworthy after already giving me that, they're batting out of order.
True... a possible way to show that this policy is not a good one is to paper the company to death with useless inventions and disclaiming them in overly-strict compliance with the policy. There's no way they can claim you're violating policy by following it to the n'th degree. There's nothing like proving a policy is bad by using it in a way they expected nobody to ever do...
No lawyer working for "the company" will ever include language that makes it clear what the company doesn't claim ownership of, there's no reason to. The original questioner just needs to get the company to acknowledge that he will be continuing his relationship with this other project on his own time, and that the company does not intend on claiming ownership of such work.
But this isn't the NDA portion of the contract he's objecting to. He doesn't want the right to talk about the company's IP, what he wants is to make sure the line between his IP and the company's IP remains solid, which is something very reasonable to ask for.
I had a job where I was handed a company cell phone in my first seconds on the job, but I was not handed a company handbook during my first full week on the job, to the point that I had to write an e-mail to my boss and CC in the human resources chief to actually get a copy handed to me.
I found it hard to believe my boss would let me walk around for a week with a company cell phone and not give me a copy of the acceptable use policy. I quickly realized that I was being set up for failure... and got myself out of that company as soon as I could.
First, it's going to be rather clear that your company was not created during your employment with this new employer. Afterall, it exists now and you haven't started there.
I'd expect that your new employer should already know of your personal business because it should be listed on your resume. Therefore, when they ask you to sign a contract saying that everything you create belongs to the company, you should ask for a specific rider that acknowledges that you have the outside interest, and that the company is aquiring no rights to that property. In exchange, you'll offer to promise that you will not work on that project while on company time or using company resources without permission. You can frame it in the terms of a disclosure as required by their contract of something you have created and will continue to create that has no relation to the company.
If the company thinks that just putting you on salary means they own your mind 24/7, then you likely don't want to accept their offer anyway. Unless you've omitted all mention of this project on you resume, they should have known you have it and intend to keep it. If they think by hiring you they're going get ownership of your small company...
Oh, and since the company no doubt had a lawyer create the agreement they're asking you to sign, you should have a lawyer create the document you're going to ask them to sign...
You can't program with JavaScript no matter how hard you try. The reason why is part of the name, JavaScript is a scripting language... there's a difference.
It's highly likely that one of the tweaks they're making to this "light" version is to lock it to the Thai language. If you want to use English, you must upgrade to the full-price XP Home at whatever the local equal to US$99 is...
if crippled means, getting rid of internet explorer, the windows kernel, and everything else, and replacing it with, linux 2.6.2, gnome 2.4....
Bingo... Microsoft is lowering the price for Windows XP to this country because if they didn't, their government would start subsidizing Linux-based PCs. This is Microsoft's last chance to make sure that the standard PC there still runs Windows.
The pro-Linux camps, however, have something to worry about here. Basically, Microsoft is willing to create a cut-rate version of XP rather than risk the users there switching over to Linux....
What this article is leaving out because it wasn't writen for a USA audience is that 1500 baht is roughly equal to US$35-40 depending on where exchange rates are.
Thailand's People PC project is a government effort to try to get the price of a PC to be affordable for the average person there. Microsoft's contribution to the project is its willingness to sell both Windows XP Home and Microsoft Office for 1500 baht... US$35-40. Uh oh, that's a drastically lower price then MS is charging the rest of the world, and MS doesn't like to have that kind of inconsistency.
So, that's why they're working on this "light" edition that will have a few things less than XP Home, and therefore be a different product that MS can price seperately.
Of course, the OSS folks can hop in here and point out that going with Linux would cost them 0 baht which converts to US$0... and that's what Microsoft's worried about. Better to get a little money than to risk getting none at all and letting Linux become the standard operating system in Thailand.
It implies that the reason Microsoft is coming up with this "light" product is because US$99 is too expensive, so they need to come up with a way of slashing the price there without the rest of the world crying foul...
Technically, you're right. DirecTV equipment will work just fine with no phone line plugged in so long as you don't try to order anything with your remote.
However, all of DirecTV's marketing materials still say a phone line is required. What this basically means is that DirecTV is reserving the right to flip the switch and make the phone line a required part of their authorization system again at any time without warning. So, you can hook up such a setup now, but there's no promise it'll always work.
Of course, there are a lot of people running DirecTV without a phone line, and would rather swtich back to cable than pay the $25 a month or so to get a landline just for DirecTV's use. So, DirecTV would pay a high price for throwing that switch, so they're not likely to do so anytime soon.
Bottom line: No promises, but it'll work for the foreseeable future without a phone line.
Well, for that matter, neither does the GPL. Something posted with a GPL license next to it may not have come from the legit copyright owner, therefore the GPL doesn't stick either.
The main Creative Commons licenses are based on the three questions on this page.
Basically, a CC license could require attribution or not, allow commerical use or not, and allow modification or not allow modification or allow modification only if licensed under the same CC license. It's very flexible, and easy to express in 3 icons which options have been selected.
Technically, the patent right belongs to he who first invented, not he who first filed. Gray could have taken Bell to court if not for the fact that Gray wasn't rich enough to hire an army of lawyers...
No, there's a common law concept called "submarine patent" that does in fact exist. "Common law" means there's no formal law on the books, but it's something that judges accept as being there anyway.
When you are legally wronged, you do not have the right to just throw your hands in the air while the problem gets worse. You have a responsiblity to mitigate, or limit, the damages as best you can. Just because the other person started a fire, you can't let it burn the whole place down and blame it on them if you had the chance to stop it as a small fire.
So, a company that is being wronged by having their patent violated has an obligation to assert that they have a patent as soon as they realize what's going on. They can't just sit back and watch the other venture, then claim the profits if it suceeds and disavow involvement if it fails.
The penalty for not mitigating when you can is having your damaged knocked back to the point where you could have stopped them. Which, in the case of a submarined patent means "Yes, they did infringe... but you're not geting anything close to the damage award you thought you were geting."
I don't know if loser pays changes much on these things. Afterall, if the SCO Group's claims on Linux are found to be worthless, the company has no other real assets left. They'd already be bankrupt, so where would the money to pay for all of the trouble they've caused come from?
I think what this calls for is some way to pierce the shield of a company so that executives become criminally responsible personally for schemes this far out of bounds. Reckless use of the courts as a business plan should not be tolerated. It basically amounts to a fraudulent claim by a whole company...
I think where things are going wrong is that tech has becomed so complex that the USPTO is having a hard time determining what's a trivial patent anymore, and is just plain mailing it all in. Afterall, the USPTO is just a registry, their mistakes can be invalidated by a court.
The problem is, this would appear to be at best a submarrined patent. You can't hold a patent on something that was a key to the tech boom of 1999-2001, and then show up in 2004 claiming you deserve royalties on it all. There comes a point where if a patent owner doesn't stop the theft of their technology, they forfeit their right to go to the courts...
When the patent is approved is not as important as when it was filed, which in this case appears to be 1998. Moves the date-to-beat back a little, but I don't think it's enough to save this joke of a patent.
Why is it that they're suing Intel customers but not Intel itself... seems like they're afraid to go after somebody who might challenge them rather than settle...
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Perhaps they were testing to see if you were a responsible adult without having to specifically told what responsible means.
That'd be nonsensical at best. I mean, I had root access to the server that stored all of the company's data... if they're still testing whether I'm trustworthy after already giving me that, they're batting out of order.
True... a possible way to show that this policy is not a good one is to paper the company to death with useless inventions and disclaiming them in overly-strict compliance with the policy. There's no way they can claim you're violating policy by following it to the n'th degree. There's nothing like proving a policy is bad by using it in a way they expected nobody to ever do...
No lawyer working for "the company" will ever include language that makes it clear what the company doesn't claim ownership of, there's no reason to. The original questioner just needs to get the company to acknowledge that he will be continuing his relationship with this other project on his own time, and that the company does not intend on claiming ownership of such work.
But this isn't the NDA portion of the contract he's objecting to. He doesn't want the right to talk about the company's IP, what he wants is to make sure the line between his IP and the company's IP remains solid, which is something very reasonable to ask for.
I had a job where I was handed a company cell phone in my first seconds on the job, but I was not handed a company handbook during my first full week on the job, to the point that I had to write an e-mail to my boss and CC in the human resources chief to actually get a copy handed to me.
I found it hard to believe my boss would let me walk around for a week with a company cell phone and not give me a copy of the acceptable use policy. I quickly realized that I was being set up for failure... and got myself out of that company as soon as I could.
First, it's going to be rather clear that your company was not created during your employment with this new employer. Afterall, it exists now and you haven't started there.
I'd expect that your new employer should already know of your personal business because it should be listed on your resume. Therefore, when they ask you to sign a contract saying that everything you create belongs to the company, you should ask for a specific rider that acknowledges that you have the outside interest, and that the company is aquiring no rights to that property. In exchange, you'll offer to promise that you will not work on that project while on company time or using company resources without permission. You can frame it in the terms of a disclosure as required by their contract of something you have created and will continue to create that has no relation to the company.
If the company thinks that just putting you on salary means they own your mind 24/7, then you likely don't want to accept their offer anyway. Unless you've omitted all mention of this project on you resume, they should have known you have it and intend to keep it. If they think by hiring you they're going get ownership of your small company...
Oh, and since the company no doubt had a lawyer create the agreement they're asking you to sign, you should have a lawyer create the document you're going to ask them to sign...
I'd hope the writer meant 5 out of 10, or maybe even 5 out of 100.
You can't program with JavaScript no matter how hard you try. The reason why is part of the name, JavaScript is a scripting language... there's a difference.
It's highly likely that one of the tweaks they're making to this "light" version is to lock it to the Thai language. If you want to use English, you must upgrade to the full-price XP Home at whatever the local equal to US$99 is...
if crippled means, getting rid of internet explorer, the windows kernel, and everything else, and replacing it with, linux 2.6.2, gnome 2.4....
Bingo... Microsoft is lowering the price for Windows XP to this country because if they didn't, their government would start subsidizing Linux-based PCs. This is Microsoft's last chance to make sure that the standard PC there still runs Windows.
The pro-Linux camps, however, have something to worry about here. Basically, Microsoft is willing to create a cut-rate version of XP rather than risk the users there switching over to Linux....
What this article is leaving out because it wasn't writen for a USA audience is that 1500 baht is roughly equal to US$35-40 depending on where exchange rates are.
Thailand's People PC project is a government effort to try to get the price of a PC to be affordable for the average person there. Microsoft's contribution to the project is its willingness to sell both Windows XP Home and Microsoft Office for 1500 baht... US$35-40. Uh oh, that's a drastically lower price then MS is charging the rest of the world, and MS doesn't like to have that kind of inconsistency.
So, that's why they're working on this "light" edition that will have a few things less than XP Home, and therefore be a different product that MS can price seperately.
Of course, the OSS folks can hop in here and point out that going with Linux would cost them 0 baht which converts to US$0... and that's what Microsoft's worried about. Better to get a little money than to risk getting none at all and letting Linux become the standard operating system in Thailand.
It implies that the reason Microsoft is coming up with this "light" product is because US$99 is too expensive, so they need to come up with a way of slashing the price there without the rest of the world crying foul...
Technically, you're right. DirecTV equipment will work just fine with no phone line plugged in so long as you don't try to order anything with your remote. However, all of DirecTV's marketing materials still say a phone line is required. What this basically means is that DirecTV is reserving the right to flip the switch and make the phone line a required part of their authorization system again at any time without warning. So, you can hook up such a setup now, but there's no promise it'll always work. Of course, there are a lot of people running DirecTV without a phone line, and would rather swtich back to cable than pay the $25 a month or so to get a landline just for DirecTV's use. So, DirecTV would pay a high price for throwing that switch, so they're not likely to do so anytime soon. Bottom line: No promises, but it'll work for the foreseeable future without a phone line.
... and SCO calls "ours".
Well, for that matter, neither does the GPL. Something posted with a GPL license next to it may not have come from the legit copyright owner, therefore the GPL doesn't stick either.
The main Creative Commons licenses are based on the three questions on this page.
Basically, a CC license could require attribution or not, allow commerical use or not, and allow modification or not allow modification or allow modification only if licensed under the same CC license. It's very flexible, and easy to express in 3 icons which options have been selected.
Technically, the patent right belongs to he who first invented, not he who first filed. Gray could have taken Bell to court if not for the fact that Gray wasn't rich enough to hire an army of lawyers...
No, there's a common law concept called "submarine patent" that does in fact exist. "Common law" means there's no formal law on the books, but it's something that judges accept as being there anyway.
When you are legally wronged, you do not have the right to just throw your hands in the air while the problem gets worse. You have a responsiblity to mitigate, or limit, the damages as best you can. Just because the other person started a fire, you can't let it burn the whole place down and blame it on them if you had the chance to stop it as a small fire.
So, a company that is being wronged by having their patent violated has an obligation to assert that they have a patent as soon as they realize what's going on. They can't just sit back and watch the other venture, then claim the profits if it suceeds and disavow involvement if it fails.
The penalty for not mitigating when you can is having your damaged knocked back to the point where you could have stopped them. Which, in the case of a submarined patent means "Yes, they did infringe... but you're not geting anything close to the damage award you thought you were geting."
I don't know if loser pays changes much on these things. Afterall, if the SCO Group's claims on Linux are found to be worthless, the company has no other real assets left. They'd already be bankrupt, so where would the money to pay for all of the trouble they've caused come from?
I think what this calls for is some way to pierce the shield of a company so that executives become criminally responsible personally for schemes this far out of bounds. Reckless use of the courts as a business plan should not be tolerated. It basically amounts to a fraudulent claim by a whole company...
I think where things are going wrong is that tech has becomed so complex that the USPTO is having a hard time determining what's a trivial patent anymore, and is just plain mailing it all in. Afterall, the USPTO is just a registry, their mistakes can be invalidated by a court.
The problem is, this would appear to be at best a submarrined patent. You can't hold a patent on something that was a key to the tech boom of 1999-2001, and then show up in 2004 claiming you deserve royalties on it all. There comes a point where if a patent owner doesn't stop the theft of their technology, they forfeit their right to go to the courts...
Yeah, but it seems like Intel's trying to get standing in the existing lawsuits so that they can put an end to this quickly...
When the patent is approved is not as important as when it was filed, which in this case appears to be 1998. Moves the date-to-beat back a little, but I don't think it's enough to save this joke of a patent.
Why is it that they're suing Intel customers but not Intel itself... seems like they're afraid to go after somebody who might challenge them rather than settle...