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Evan Brown has something of great value. It is not silver or gold or a machine that turns dog fur into cashmere. It is an idea. As in a thought that is floating around his head.
Brown's idea has something to do with creating a new system that updates old computer software. Such innovative technology could bring in megabucks, which 45-year-old Brown does not care to share with his former employer.
His former employer begs to disagree. Don't go out and buy your Caribbean island just yet, DSC Communications has told Brown. Needless to say, suits have been filed. The matter is now before a district court in Collin County, Texas.
When Brown went to work for the McKinney, Texas, telecommunications company 12 years ago, he had signed an employment agreement giving the company control of his ideas. All of them, according to the company. And that would include an idea for a system that translates data from old binary mainframe computers into modern computer language.
Problem is, the idea is still rolling around Brown's head. Unless Brown talks a great deal in his sleep, there is no way of getting at it without the software inventor's cooperation. DSC is demanding that Brown spit it out. He is keeping his trap shut. In short, Brown has the know how but he won't tell how.
Yes, we have entered the Twilight Zone. Not only are we crashing the gates of a formerly private realm -- the thoughts swirling inside a person's brain -- but we are traveling into a new dimension of law.
"There is a lot of case law on who owns what when you are dealing with property generated by a person who is employed by another person or firm," Alfred Hall, a specialist in intellectual property law, told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "But to my knowledge, this is the first case where the property is in the guy's head and it's never been on paper anywhere."
Hall added, "This will be plowing new ground." And Brown's feelings on having his thoughts forcibly harvested? "In some ways, it's quite intrusive," he remarked.
But the story gets even better. Brown claims that he came up with the concept in his free time. Thus, the agreement he signed with DSC does not apply in any event. Brown insists that he worked out 80 percent of his idea before he went to work for DSC and the remaining 20 percent "during a long drive." In other words, he was not doing his thinking on DSC's time.
Are we to believe that Brown's multimillion-dollar idea never rolled around his cranium while he was eating a tuna fish sandwich in the DSC cafeteria or daydreaming at his DSC desk? Not very easily, but who can prove otherwise?
The war over ownership of ideas will only heat up as we progress into an economy ever more dependent on technology. Wealth in the high-tech industries depends less and less on who owns the factory building and the machinery inside and more on the genius of its thinkers. That puts the nerds in the driver's seat.
Also playing a part is the change in relations between intellectual workers and management. Brown is not some character out of a 1951 Alec Guiness movie, where the young scientist labors tirelessly in a company lab in the hopes of placing his brilliant discovery on the boss's desk. He comes from the age of Dilbert, in which loyalty to the boss about equals the boss's loyalty to the employee. It's every man for himself.
The one industry that seems impervious to changes in the workplace is the legal industry. Lawyers are busy at work on this case -- and they have more clients to represent than just DSC Communications and Evan Brown.
There's also Lance Flores. Flores is a computer programmer who insists that the thought was originally his. Flores says that he and Brown discussed the problems of converting old computer data at a meeting of the Dallas-Fort Worth Unix Users Group in 1991.
Then there is Brown's own lawyer, Richard A. Sayles. The attorney's contingency fee is based on a share of the future profits from his client's software system. "Believe me, I've asked him if it works," Sayles has said.
In the meantime, Brown and his idea are unemployed. Understandably, the inventor feels some discomfort over his unusual situation. One can say that he is walking around with a price on his head.
Froma Harrop is a Journal-Bulletin editorial writer and columnist.
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