Re: Alcatel's Legal Goon Squad
by: mermaidfeet
9/15/00 1:52 am
Msg: 7627 of 7627
I am an employer and I can see the problem from the other side.
Typically, a new project involves a big investment, in the belief being first to market will yield a substantial
competitive
edge.
Employees, despite non-disclosure agreements, sometimes are not discrete, and word gets out to competition
about the
project. Often it is through salesmen visiting the premises, who seen to be able to read bits of paper upside down
in a locked
drawer with the lights off. Sometimes it is at hole 19, sometimes over a beer with school or boot buddies,
sometimes a
next-door neighbour (or his wife).
So the competition now knows what is in the wind, but is not able, in a clean world, to catch up. But they sense
the threat
the new product poses.
The only options are:
1. to initiate a next-generation product
2. to hire the very people developing it at the first company, and, in effect, to fraudulently induce employees of
the first
company to break trust and employment contract and to jump ship with the booty.
It should not surprise you to learn that occasionally when the cost of development has been high and the project
strategic,
the person who put up the bread has the temerity to protect his intellectual property. It happens often, and some
of the
settlements are big and just.
That you could not find a promising project to work on in Alcatel has to be a half-truth, unless you are a dentist,
or you are
not getting on with your boss.
Posted as a reply to: Msg 7626 by mrbisfree
-----------------------
Re: Alcatel's Legal Goon Squad
by: a7670rsp
9/15/00 9:10 am
Msg: 7629 of 7640
Sounds like sour grapes to me.
Alcatel is in the business of making money. Lawyers (and lawsuits) cost a lot of dough. Your assumption that Alcatel goes
against any employee leaving the development of an 'important product for the company' to work for a competing product
does not hold.
From what I have read from Alcatel's lawsuits, they were all against blatant attempts to steal intellectual property. In those
lawsuits, not only did the employees work on a competing product, but they work on the exact same area of that product.
Example:
Let's take Jo, an engineer that has just left Alcatel to work for a competitor. At Alcatel, he worked on developing a
cup-holder for high speed router X.
In his new job, he is working on designing a cup-holder on a competing product that just happen to bear an uncanny
resemblance to the one he developed for Alcatel, and was, incidentely, added to the product not long after he was hired...
There is a good reason why Alcatel win most of their lawsuits (beside having a good legal departement)... |
