+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