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From: jbs@mit-eddie.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sources
Subject: Re: Public domain software proclamation -- be careful!
Message-ID: <5482@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 13-Apr-87 19:07:57 EST
Article-I.D.: eddie.5482
Posted: Mon Apr 13 19:07:57 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Apr-87 02:35:27 EST
References: <197@twg-ap.UUCP> <4477@utah-cs.UUCP> <8411@clyde.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: jbs@eddie.UUCP (Jeff Siegal)
Distribution: na
Organization: MIT, EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 47
Summary: You're citing proof by intimidation

In article <8411@clyde.ATT.COM> rcj@moss.UUCP (Curtis Jackson) writes:

>Most companies do indeed, including AT&T -- ANYTHING you do is theirs
>while you work for them.

Glad you think so; that's what they want.

>I posted a PD version of dup2() a couple of years ago [...].  I got a
>call from an AT&T corporate lawyer who subsequently sent me copies of
>the [...] agreement I had signed

You mean AT&T is _spying_ on its empoyees?   Violating their privacy by
monitoring this public forum (what would the NSA think?) :-)

>Now you know of another 'lil ole place -- AT&T.

Now I know of another place that likes to create it's own legal
system, by intimidating its employees.  (Is this the kind of place you
would want to work, John? :-)) 

Seriously, what you do on your own time is yours, even if you use
company equipment to do it, _if_ it is not a part of your job.  

For example, if you work for AT&T as a computer systems developer or
researcher, and you invent true AI in the middle of the night, while
you are home in bed, it's theirs.  But if you're a secretary and you
do the same thing, it belongs to you, legally invalid employment
agreements notwithstanding. 

Now, if you're AT&T, and this happens, you have 3 options:

1) Help the secretary obtain legal protection for his/her invention
(ie.  patent, or whatever).  Help him/her publicize and market it, so
s/he can make lots of money, and everyone gets to use this great new
thing (including you)

2) Ignore it, so no one benefits.

3) Intimidate him/her with calls from the AT&T legal assault team,
pages of legalese, threats, warnings, etc.  When s/he realizes that it
"must" belong to AT&T "because he/she works there", get some big shot
from Bell Labs to look at it, patent it, and assign the patent to
AT&T, and you make LOTS of money. 

Which would you do?

Jeff Siegal