Mind Control (Who Owns Your Thoughts)

Wired Web Site ^ | 15 August 2002 | Elisa Batista

[droberts]

Mind control: Do companies own the thoughts of their employees? According to one Texas judge, Alcatel, the French manufacturer of telecom equipment, does.

In a case tied up in the Texas court system for five and a half years, Judge Curt B. Henderson of the Collin County, Texas, District Court found that Alcatel owned a former employee's software idea that had never been written on paper.

[Harrison Bergeron]

GE still owns the voices in my head, and refuses to pay them.

[js1138]

His only hope is to be able to prove that he conceived of this idea before he worked there, in which case it wouldn't be covered by the agreement.

Hope he wrote it down, and dated it. this is a common practice in large companies, particularly when working in an industry gives you the knowledge and skill with which to develop new products. If he had written a novel during his employment, the judge would probably not say his employer owned it.

Best bet if you don't have proof that the idea was unrelated to employment is to wait a couple of years after you quit.

[Pining_4_TX]

That's OK, you can form a large corporation with an army of lawyers and take them off other people.

Or, I can lie my way into congress and tax it out of them! :)