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Re: V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai: Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

2012-02-19 00:26:00

+1, that is what is so surprising. Seems to me this guy, clearly was intelligent (a Westinghouse Science Award participant is not something to sneer at) and was smart enough to exploit the system. Registering the copyright of this first and last 100 code lines under the term "EMAIL" well, I have to give him credit for some brilliance if the USPTO was too incompetent to question it. I was very privy to many IP related issues of software at Westinghouse with many of the early conflicts and many early court precedence of what instituted software IP issues.

Just consider that when I send an article to PC MAG to get that $50 illustrating how to do a TREE DIAGRAM of your directory, I was quickly called to the Pittsburgh HQ chief counsel and told, "You can't to that."

So consider that this KID, even if he should be recognized as the inventor of something, in that ERA, he would not be owner of the IP - but rather the company that he did it for.

This is strongly based on court precedence which in summary says, if a company is paying 80% or more of your compensation, they are the owner of any invention of your work. This was very important for the era dealing with Consultants. If the consultant "LIFE" was dependent on the company he was doing work for, the company own ALL the work. He had to prove that the work compensation was not a life dependency.

He was a KID, clearly he was not funding any of his work on his own. He used some centralized system and simply wrote a nice UI. So push comes to solve, if there are any claims of ownership would be the company he did the work for.

I know this because the lawyers I have are experts in making such people work at McDonald's for a few years due to violations of NDA and company IP contracts.


Pete Resnick wrote:

On 2/18/12 7:51 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
For reference, I just sent this message...

Apparently this is not the first time this guy has made up stuff and told the press. This surfaced in Time magazine last year as well:

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/15/the-man-who-invented-email/

It appears he is just a self aggrandizing liar.

You might also want to send to ombudsman(_at_)washpost(_dot_)com or call 
202.334.7582.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/patrick-b-pexton/2011/02/24/ABkLhYN_page.html

Incredibly poor fact checking and editing.

pr


--
Sincerely

Hector Santos
http://www.santronics.com
jabber: hector(_at_)jabber(_dot_)isdg(_dot_)net

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