Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!amdahl!pyramid!leadsv!laic!nova!darin
From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Non-Disclosure Agreements and Rights to Invention
Message-ID: <395@laic.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 89 01:04:13 GMT
References: <6185@louie.udel.EDU>
Sender: news@laic.UUCP
Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson)
Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park
Lines: 48

In article <6185@louie.udel.EDU> DEFRANCO@radc-tops20.arpa (Carl DeFranco) writes:
>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.

This sounds fine, but...  What about using the equipment on your own
time?  Such as UNIX utilities/etc. which are difficult to do on your
Amy at home.  I ran into this snag awhile back.  I had written a program
for Suns in my own time (since I only get 10 hrs a week to manage Suns),
with the chance that I would use it if it ever became "usable".  It
turned out that lots of people wanted something just like that, so I
posted it to the net.  A little later, someone from Sun called and asked
if I would be willing to discuss rights to the program so that they
could include it in a product of theirs (they would support and improve
it, but it wouldn't add to the cost of the product it was included in).
So naturally, the first thing I did was talk to someone up in the big
office on how to do this, since at this point it dawned on me that
Lockheed probably owned the rights to it, but would be fair and
generous about it.  The first thing they had me do was to fill out a
public disclosure form, essentially giving me permission to post it in
the first place :-)  After that, Lockheed wanted to be sure that they
wouldn't be held liable, etc. from the software (I had explained that it
was next to nil that they could make any money off of it :-), and wanted
to see a sample of the license that would go with it, etc. etc.
Eventually, I gave up being the middleman, and gave the right phone
numbers to Sun and Lockheed to let them fight about it.  I assume it's
still up in the air at the moment.

So, was I wrong to post the program to USENET in the first place?  I
wonder how many of the things that come over comp.sources.unix have been
cleared by the company who owns the computer it was developed on (this
doesn't apply to academic sights probably).  Should Lockheed own the
rights to the program, even though they didn't pay me to write it?
(I did use company time to debug it after it was in use for awhile)
Come to think of it, how would I, with only an Amiga at home, write a
UNIX specific piece of software and be able to own it?  What about some
of the VMS programs I have written (which is what I really get paid to
do) on company time, which would be very useful to put into public
domain, but which Lockheed couldn't hope to sell (even if they did that
sort of thing)?

Of course, on the bright side, I can freely give away all my Amiga
source with out worrying about big brother!  (hmnn... can I give away
executables if I didn't get the 'developer' version of C?)

Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com)
	"You can't fight in here! This is the war room.."