Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!mmdf
From: DEFRANCO@radc-tops20.arpa (Carl DeFranco)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Non-Disclosure Agreements and Rights to Invention
Message-ID: <6185@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 1 Jan 89 23:54:25 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 20

I'm not sure this discussion needs to be carried too far, but to clarify the
position of employers (not that I agree) who require such agreements, they
hold that any ideas developed by you while on their payroll, working in their
facilities, using their equipment and software, is THEIRS.  You may find that
this position has been supported by the courts over the years, whether or not
you agree.  The stumbling point has always been whether this claim can be 
extended into your private life, i.e., if you develop some interesting 
program/technique/algorithm in theprivacy of your home on your own computing
equipment, who owns it?  The generally accepted view is that IF you used
information developed at work in your private efforts, the company may have
a valid claim to your work, as long as they can demonstrate that the
information is: 1) proprietary and you knew it, and 2) that it is unlikely
that you would have developed that idea without access to compnay data.

Remember that ideas are not subject to copyright, only the recorded instance
of the idea.  

Carl DeFranco
defranco@radc-tops20.arpa
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