Company Owns Employee's Thoughts?

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/26627.html
> http://www.unixguru.com/
> http://www.unixguru.com/background.html
> http://www.unixguru.com/biography.html


> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/26627.html

Alcatel owns US employee's thoughts

By Tim Richardson
8/12/2002

A US man says he will appeal a court's decision which ruled
that an idea that existed only in his mind belonged to his
employer. 

Evan Brown has been working on an idea to convert old
computer code so that it can be run on modern machine since
1975. 

When Brown mentioned the idea to his employers while he
worked for DSC Communications of Plano, Texas (subsequently
bought by Alcatel) DSC decided it owned the rights to
Brown's insight and demanded that he revealed his idea.
Brown refused and he was fired. DCS then launched legal
action against him to gain possession of his thoughts. 

Almost six years later and Brown has finally been told by a
judge that DCS is entitled to his idea. He's also been told
to stump up $332,000 in legal costs. Throughout the legal
process Brown maintained that he'd never written down the
idea, only solved part of it while employed by DCS and
thought of some of it outside office hours. 

His former employer maintained that he had signed a contract
which contained a clause giving DCS ownership rights of any
of his "inventions". 

Brown's idea was deemed to be an "invention". 

On his Web site (http://www.unixguru.com/) Brown claims he's
been "railroaded" and has vowed to appeal. 

He also launched a scathing attack on the justice system in
Texas. 

The lesson from DSC/Alcatel .vs. Evan Brown? If you've got a
good idea, keep it under your hat. That, or abstain from
thinking altogether. ®

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> http://www.unixguru.com/

Who Owns Evan Brown's Brain?


Background

DSC Communications, Inc. vs. Evan Brown

Cause No. 199-596-97 

Pending in the 219th District Court, Collin County, Texas

DSC fired Evan Brown and then sued Mr. Brown for an "idea"
that exists only in Mr. Brown's mind. 

DSC claims that Mr. Brown's "idea" belongs to DSC because
Mr. Brown was working for DSC at the time Mr. Brown solved
the last piece of his "idea". Mr. Brown had been working on
this "idea" since 1975, 12 years before Mr. Brown even
became an employee of DSC. 

DSC claims that this is not a landmark case and that there
is a well developed body of law covering such situations. We
believe the situation is different in this case because Evan
Brown's "idea" exists only in his mind. The only well
developed body of law covers ideas that have either been
written down or exist in some other tangible form. 

Mr. Brown's job at DSC was to provide technical support for
the Motorola Cellular Division software testing group. Mr.
Brown's job at DSC at the time he was fired, was not
software development or software reverse engineering. 

The "idea" that Mr. Brown has is for an automated computer
conversion of machine executable binary code into portable
high level programming source code. 

The usefulness of the "idea" is to help companies that have
old computer programs where the original source code has
been lost or the cost to re-write these programs for modern
computers is too expensive. Most large businesses have
computer programs that have been developed over the past 30
years that will only run on big mainframe computers. Many of
these companies would like to run their computer programs on
new inexpensive PCs and/or workstations but do not have the
resources to manually convert these old computer programs. 


Two Million Dollars for Your Thoughts

In a modern David vs. Goliath tale, Texan computer expert
Evan Brown is being sued for what's on his mind. Over the
past twenty years or so, Brown has been mentally formulating
a way to convert old computer code into new languages. While
he was employed by DSC Communications of Plano, Texas, Brown
mentioned the idea to his employers, who decided they own
the rights to Brown's thoughts, even though he came up with
the software conversion procedure on his own time, and it
was unrelated to the work he was doing at DSC. The company
demanded he disclose the procedure to them, and when he
refused, DSC fired him. 

The case is making news around the world and setting
precedents in intellectual property law. The procedure could
be worth a fortune, and DSC claims that Brown, who worked
for them ten years before his termination, signed an
agreement making all his ideas property of DSC. Although the
company initially offered Brown two million dollars for his
thoughts, they rescinded the offer and instead sued Brown in
April 1997 for refusing to turn over the idea to them. In
spite of being ordered by two judges to divulge his "idea",
the dogged Texan refuses to budge, and the case will likely
to go to trial sometime in 1998. 

For more information on this case click here
(http://www.unixguru.com/background.html). 

E-mail

I'd love to hear from you. Please contact me at: 
mailto:evan@unixguru.com

----

> http://www.unixguru.com/background.html

Stubborn Texan Holds His Ground

In a precedent-setting intellectual property case, computer
expert Evan Brown has been making news around the world and,
in spite of being fired, forced to sell his assets, and deal
with mushrooming legal bills, the staunch Texan refuses to
waver. In April 1997, Brown's employer, DSC Communications
of Plano, Texas, fired the ten-year employee after he
declined to disclose an idea he has to convert old computer
code into new languages. The software conversion procedure,
which has the potential of being worth millions of dollars,
was not conceived on company time and was not related to his
work at DSC. Evan Brown's job at DSC was to provide
technical support for the Motorola Cellular Division
software testing group. 

DSC, on the other hand, says that Brown signed an agreement
at the time of his employment giving the company sole
ownership of his ideas. The actual agreement, signed shortly
after Brown came on board in April 1987, granted DSC rights
to anything invented by Brown during his course of work with
the telecommunications computer company. 

Pointing out that his conversion concept was "80 percent
complete" before he joined DSC, Brown says he first began
thinking of the idea while visiting a friend in El Paso in
1975. Years later, in 1996, Brown went to his employers and
asked their permission to develop the idea on his own. DSC
then offered Brown two million dollars in exchange for the
concept. The following year, as discussions continued, DSC
decided that they owned the idea anyway and demanded that
Brown produce it and turn it over to them. 

Part of the intrigue of the case is that the concept exists
only in Evan Brown's brain, and science has yet to conceive
of a way to extract a person's thoughts. Are there limits to
what a company can own? Is it possible to possess an
individual's thoughts 24 hours a day? Although the case has
yet to be decided (trial has been postponed until 1998), in
May 1997, a judge ordered Brown to disclose his idea, which
he refused to do, and in June, Brown defied a second court
order to reveal his thoughts. One thing is certain, though,
and it is that Evan Brown has proven that American
independence and entrepreneurship are alive and kicking. 

For more information on Evan Brown click here
(http://www.unixguru.com/biography.html).

----

> http://www.unixguru.com/biography.html

Biography

When Evan Brown was 6 years old, he took apart the family's
only bicycle just to see how it worked. And when his mom
said, "Your father's gonna be mad when he gets home!" Evan
put it back together (before his father came home). As an
inquisitive two-year-old, Evan walked around with his
screwdriver, casually unscrewing every screw he encountered.
His mother reports that this habit of her son's became quite
bothersome when cabinet doors, etc., were continually
falling off. 

Ever since the inquisitive youngster helped his engineer dad
rebuild a lawnmower engine at the age of 6, Evan Brown has
loved a challenge. Whether the challenge was to design
numerical models for oil recovery or develop a coordinate
geometry program used to subdivide land into streets and
housing lots, the computer scientist from Texas has made it
happen. 

Born in 1952 in Fort Worth to Robert and Cornelia Brown,
Evan grew up tinkering with cars and mechanical things.
While in high school, Brown and a friend rebuilt and rewired
a British-made MGA. Evan also managed to keep a 1941 Ford
sedan with over 250,000 miles on it running. 

Brown received a B.S. in computer science in 1978 from Texas
A&M University. At A&M, Evan was in great demand for his
ability to find and fix programming problems. The "Computer
Bug Man" was famous for staying up days at a time to
research and solve problems induced by application
programming bugs, operating system bugs and undocumented
features of computer systems. 

Programs Evan Brown wrote while in college include numerical
models for oil recovery, models for 2D/3D structural
analysis, subroutines for fast matrix operations in
petroleum engineering, numerical models of the atmosphere of
Venus, and utility programs for converting programs and data
from non-IBM based computer facilities. From 1979 through
1982, Brown programmed computers at Texas Instruments in
Dallas as a Facilities Engineer. In 1982, he went to work in
Houston for Time Energy, where he developed microprocessor
hardware and software for Heating Ventilating and Air
Conditioning (HVAC) control systems. Between leaving Time
Energy and going to work for DSC, Brown worked as an
independant consultant designing and building computer
hardware and developing both firmware and application
software. 

In 1987 Brown was employed by DSC Communications in Plano,
Texas, as a Senior Member Technical Staff. At DSC, a
telecommunications corporation, Brown worked on the Signal
Transport Point (STP) maintaining the Fault Isolation and
Test subsystem software. 

It was long before he went to work for DSC that Evan began
working on the problem of converting old computer codes into
new languages. The original problem of converting binary
computer code into human readable software was first posed
to Brown by a friend working in El Paso in 1975. The problem
was a company mainframe computer was tied up several days a
month simulating a computer that again was simulating
another computer to run an old binary computer program. When
Brown asked his friend why this company didn't rewrite the
old software, the reply was the company didn't have the
original source code and the original programmers had all
left the company. 

The idea Brown has is for an automated computer conversion
of machine-executable binary code into portable high level
programming source code. The usefulness of this "portable
... code" is to help companies that have old computer
programs convert these programs to run on newer, more
powerful computers. Most large businesses have computer
programs that have been developed over the past 30 years and
will only run on huge mainframe computers. These companies
would like to run the old computer programs on new
inexpensive PCs and/or workstations but do not have the
resources to manually convert these old programs. 

In 1996, Brown went to his employers and asked permission to
develop his idea. At first, DSC investigated giving Brown a
release, then later the company changed their mind and
offered Brown up to two million dollars from the savings to
DSC. (See legal exhibit $2,000,000 offer) Discussions began,
with DSC concluding that they, not Evan Brown, owned the
idea, which has the potential of being worth millions of
dollars. DSC then demanded that Brown disclose the
conversion procedure and turn it over to them. When Brown
refused, trouble began. 

In April 1997, DSC fired Evan Brown and then sued him for
refusing to divulge his idea. The case is setting legal
precedents and intriguing intellectual property experts all
over the world. Since the idea has never been written down
and only exists in Brown's mind, the question courts have to
decide is who owns the thoughts of Evan Brown. In May of
1997, a judge ordered Brown to disclose his idea. He refused
to do so and DSC filed a motion for contempt of court. Brown
likewise refused a second court order in June to say what
was in his mind, and so far the courts have denied DSC's
motions for contempt. 

Despite his termination from DSC, huge legal bills, and the
forced sale of his home and other assets, the Texas computer
genius is sticking to his guns. Evan, who is single and
lives in Plano, Texas, is described by friends as honest,
hardworking and loyal. 

" Determined' and principled' are words that come to mind
when I think of Evan Brown," says Roger Ansted, a longtime
friend. "I'd hand him five thousand dollars, and I know he'd
take good care of it. I appreciate the values he has." 

Although Brown spends most of his time these days reading
legal documents and going over the case with his attorneys,
he does takes some time out to work on his farm and do a
little traveling. An amateur photographer and pilot, Evan
finds he has little resources right now to enjoy his
hobbies. 

The past president of the Dallas/Fort Worth Unix Users Group
describes himself as a "computer geek in cowboy boots." Evan
Brown deals with all the media attention he has generated
much as he does with everything else: a dry wit and a belief
that justice will prevail. 

"In some ways it's quite intrusive," he remarked regarding
the lawsuit. 

The case of DSC Communications, Inc. vs. Evan Brown should
go to trial sometime in 1998 in Collin County, Texas. As
Evan himself quickly concedes, the family and friends he has
are far more valuable than are his thoughts, and they will
be there for him long after the courts have determined what
will happen to the software conversion procedure that still
exists only in his mind.