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Re: [OM] Publication rights question

Subject: Re: [OM] Publication rights question
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 14:56:29 -0400
I have a single patent to my name
<http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22International+Business+Machines%22.ASNM.&s2=Norcutt.INNM.&OS=AN/>
It's assigned to IBM as owner (my employer at the time) but I and my two 
co-inventors are listed as the inventors.  I conceived the basic idea, 
Ted Waldron did the really difficult task of implementing it in a real 
system and Khoa Huynh did the performance verification to prove that it 
really worked.  But it should be clear that IBM gave credit where due. 
Incidentally, if you read the patent and don't understand it don't be 
concerned.  Even though the basic idea was mine I hardly understand the 
language of the patent myself after the patent attorney's got through 
with the wording.  :-)

Chuck Norcutt


On 8/1/2013 10:50 AM, Chris Trask wrote:
>>
>> A friend of mine saw my dragstrip sunset photo and suggested I submit it to
>> Hot Rod Magazine.
>>
>> I looked at their website, and found the disclaimer for reader-submitted
>> material.  Essentially, if they use my photo, I sign over all rights to
>> them, forever, and they can  do whatever they want with it, wherever they
>> want to, on whatever media they choose, including any media that might be
>> invented sometime in the future.  And I get nothing in return.
>>
>> Obviously, I'm not going to do that.
>>
>> My question however:  Is that the norm?
>>
>
>       Sure is, and it's pretty much intellectual property theft by extortion. 
>  You'd be amazed and the ways organizations and employers go about legally 
> stealing intellectual property from individuals.  I almost joined an 
> organization within the UofA agricultural co-op until I read the fine print 
> of the contract and saw in plain language that they had all rights to 
> anything that you came up with if you joined.  And here I was, developing 
> seasonally adjuasted powders that would duplicate the chemistry of natural 
> rainfall for use in germinating native plant seeds.
>
>       In Germany employers can not assume absolute ownership of the ideas of 
> employees.  The employer has a limited time (two years, I think) in which 
> they can make use of the ideas, and after that all rights revert to the 
> employee.  And even if they do use the idea the employee remains as the 
> inventor.  Over here in the US employees are robbed of their ideas and 
> promptly thrown out into the street.  That happened to me once, and a number 
> of subsequent employers tried but failed.
>
>
> Chris
>
-- 
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