[Banking-pm] Interesting court case: watch this space

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 02:27:46PM +0100, Paul Johnson wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 20, 2007 at 06:45:30AM -0500, IvorW wrote:
> 
> > This is concerning patents and intellectual property.
> > It's currently going through appeal.
> > 
> > http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2006/595.html
> 
> I've not read the whole thing through in detail, but it seems to me that

[ ... ]

The following mail came from Dr Pinkava, but spamassassin took exception
to it.  He asked for it to be forwarded to the list.

Incidentally, I hadn't realised this list was archived.  There's a
couple of messages I almost wrote but now I'm glad I didn't ;-)


> Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 06:15:59 -0000
> From: Pavel Pinkava <pavel.pinkava at ntlworld.com>
> Subject: RE:[Banking-pm] Interesting court case: watch this space
> To: 'Paul Johnson' <paul at pjcj.net>
> Cc: "'Holzman, Benjamin'" <bholzman at iseoptions.com>
> 
> Dear Paul,
> 
>  
> 
> You don't know me but regarding your posting below you should know that:-
> 
>  
> 
> a) I agree that "if you are an employee of a company, and you develop
> something for the company on company time, then that thing should belong to
> the company"...
>  
> b) Actually my defence hinged on the fact that it was not part of my "normal
> duties" to invent and I won on this point... The discussion about
> specifically assigned duties is related to a point of English law my
> opponents (former employers) tried to hang their hat on and which my
> barrister had to fight them on : Unfortunately they won on this point -
> quite spuriously... 
>  
> c) There are many points of fact the judge couldn't shoe-horn into a finding
> in favour of my employers so he just left them out of his summary e.g.  Not
> only was I not employed to invent and what I did invent was outside anything
> I was specifically asked to do but I was never specifically asked to invent
> anything at all as my boss acknowledged when she admitted she had no
> expectation for me to invent anything...
>  
> d) You say much more interesting to you would be a case in which:- 
> (1) I developed something totally outside the core business using company
> time or resources; or
> (2) I developed something business related but purely using his own time and
> resources; or 
> (3) I was contracted to do something for the company and created something
> using that knowledge after his contract was finished.
> On point (1) the judgement acknowledges that my inventions lay outside of
> LIFFE's futures and options business! I should say in fairness the
> inventions plug in to electronic futures platforms so they are not entirely
> distinct in that sense. But please bear in mind I was not employed in IT for
> LIFFE but in marketing e.g. brochure writing etc!  
> On point (2) I did develop my inventions in entirely my own time and
> resources! Although LIFFE sold some spin to the judge on this one there's a
> big difference in writing up a presentation about something on company time
> because you're hoping (and have been led to believe) the firm will cooperate
> with you in the business opportunity you have created out of thin air.
> Another point:- I was so busy doing my regular job including marketing trips
> to Shanghai, Germany, Spain etc that just to do my regular work I had to
> bust my balls - LIFFE gave me no time to present my inventions until six
> months after I made them as it took that long for their importance to
> percollate up the management structure... On this last point do not believe
> everything they told the court and which ended up in the judgement!
> On point (3) I did come up with my inventions six months after I learnt
> something new on a specific but different and frankly mundane thing that was
> something I had to do for the company i.e. the knowledge of OTC credit index
> swaps was used after the original task was mothballed.
>  
> e) Re Ben Holtzman's posting : My former bosses were so bad at recognising
> innovation that they couldn't even see how great pari-mutuel stuff developed
> by an outside firm was... In fact nothing inventive has ever happened at
> LIFFE... The real question is how come they had the bald face cheek to
> pretend to be an inventive company rather than be honest to the court (or
> better still not fight me at all): The answer is simply Paul - They counted
> on people like you "not reading the whole thing"...
>  
> Hopefully you are now "much more interesting"?
> 
>  
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>  
> 
> Pavel
> 
>  
> 
> P.S. I sent you the above personally because I didn't know how to get on the
> perl mailing list (I'm not an IT guy remember) and I didn't want to cause a
> flaming row there anyhow. I would appreciate if you or Ben set the record
> straight (perhaps by cutting and pasting the above) as the thread is visible
> on Google and I don't like comments like yours to go unanswered. Also
> attached is an article for you from a trade journal and here is a link to
> the Financial Times
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/912327bc-c088-11db-995a-000b5df10621.html 

-- 
Paul Johnson - paul at pjcj.net
http://www.pjcj.net